Berlin Bulletin No.

Drama in Hamburg and Dresden

By Victor Grossman

February 21 2011

The only connection between two real-life dramas over
the weekend was the Elbe River which cuts through the
big port city of Hamburg in the north and Dresden, the
rococo capital of Saxony in the south. Both cities were
divided by more than the river.

In Hamburg the Christian Democrats (CDU), Angela
Merkel's party, took their worst beating in sixteen
years. The mayor and his party, after ruling in an
uneasy coalition with the once leftish Greens, dropped
to 21.9 percent, causing barely hidden frowns for the
national leaders, who quickly claimed this was only a
local matter, irrelevant to six more state elections
this year. The Greens, who had hoped to switch to a
coalition with the Social Democrats, were also
disappointed. With their poll numbers high on a
national level, their Hamburg result, 11.2 %, was only
a small gain, and they will not be needed in the new
government of Germany's second largest urban center.

They reason was that the Social Democrats (SPD) won an
amazing victory, with 48.3 %. This gives them 64 seats
in the legislature; only 61 are needed to govern alone.
The new mayor will be Olaf Scholz, 58, a lawyer, like
so many a left-winger in his youth, but who later
became a supporter of Merkel's predecessor as
Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder and held many leadership
positions in the SPD. His only claim to fame goes back
to 2001 when, in charge of police in Hamburg, he
insisted on the forced use of emetics against suspected
drug dealers, even after this caused the death of one
prisoner and was condemned by doctors and even the
European court in Strasbourg. But all that was mostly
forgotten as he and his party joyfully celebrated an
even larger than expected victory.

The two smaller parties could smile at least. The Free
Democrats, nationally in a popularity crisis, mostly
because people seem sick of their head, Foreign
Minister Westerwelle, got 6.6 %  and thus succeeded in
getting back into the legislature. That was comforting.

As for the Left Party, it had been a cliff-hanger. In
2008 they won 6.4 %, giving them seats in the city-
state legislature. But 2010 was a rough year, with both
internal quarrels and a mass attack by all other
parties after co-president Gesine Loetzsch dared utter
the word Communism as a possible goal for a future
society.  Failing to get the required 5 % in Hamburg
would be a heavy blow, politically and psychologically.
Supporters everywhere held their collective breath!

And breathed a sigh of relief! The result, exactly like
2008, was 6.4 %! No gain, but no loss either, and both
Dora Heyenn, who heads the party in Hamburg, and
national leader Gesine Loetzsch looked very happy. They
pledged to fight harder than ever for decently-priced
homes, free kindergartens, no college tuition fees,
public projects, not only for the wealthy, and
environmental gains.

Keeping their eight seats in the legislature may help
in the fight to get into the legislatures of Rhineland-
Palatinate and Baden-Wurttemberg in southwestern
Germany and possibly win first place in the East German
state of Saxony-Anhalt. All three states vote on March
20th.

By sailing up the Elbe past a dozen famous castles and
cathedrals, the traveler reaches Dresden, capital of
Saxony in Germany's southeastern corner, bordering
Poland and the Czech Republic. Saxony has a glorious
history - if one ignores the fact that in every war it
chose the losing side. More recently, it gained
notoriety when the neo-Nazi NPD party got the biggest
pro-Nazi vote in all Germany, 5.6 % in 2009, and eight
deputies in the state legislature. On their best
behavior, in suit and tie, their presence gives them a
propaganda platform and a source of government euros
dealt out on the basis of election returns.

Behind these eight are local leaders who join citizens'
groups and organize festivals and are now represented
in over 70 Saxon town and village councils. Behind
them, a third level consists of semi-underground gangs
of thugs, indirectly tied to the NPD, who intimidate
people with immigrant backgrounds or anti-Nazi views.
In all Germany their actions have resulted in at least
149 murders since 1990 and average five brutal attacks
a week.

They try to show strength and win recruits with marches
in nearly every town or city in Germany. The thugs and
young recruits are on their best behavior, their loud
demands often stress social questions but are always
marked by hatred of foreigners. Most such marches are
protected legally and by police since the legal NPD or
some front group registers them in advance.

They almost always face resistance by anti-fascists,
who usually out-number them. Several major events had
to be abandoned. In Wunsdorf in Bavaria, where Hitler's
deputy Hess is buried, the town welcomed them by and
large until 2005 when 4500 Nazis from all over Germany
and Europe jammed the little town of 9500 inhabitants
too arrogantly and they were banned at last.  A burial
site south of Berlin for German soldiers who died in
one of the final wartime battles was given up after
counterdemonstrators regularly outnumbered Nazis. In
Leipzig, attempts to march from the main station to a
huge monument marking Napoleon's defeat here in 1813
were dropped when, year after year, anti-Nazis blocked
their route.

But in more conservative Dresden they held annual
"memorial marches" on the anniversary of the huge
wartime bombing of Dresden which killed 25,000 people.
Playing on the strong feelings in the city, they
misused the commemoration by claiming that this had
been Dresden's Holocaust which had balanced out "that
other one".

Last year anti-fascists found this intolerable. Fascism
is not an opinion but a crime, they said, and 10,000
people, an alliance of left-wing groups, sat down for a
long day in icy weather, blocking off all streets
around the station where the Nazis inside choked with
helpless anger at the dramatic defeat. They vowed to
make up for it this year.

Once again a right-wing court, in a final decision,
gave the Nazis the permission they needed. Under public
pressure nationally, the mayor of Dresden, a woman from
the Christian Democrats, organized a human chain around
the whole downtown area, 14,000 strong last year,
17,000 strong this year, joining hands for two minutes
while bells tolled to commemorate the dead of 1945 and
oppose misuse of their memory. It was a good measure in
its way, but stopped no Nazis, who planned, after a
preliminary gathering on that day, February 13th, to
set their big event for February 19th, last Saturday.
7000 or more of their number would be in Dresden for a
rally and marches in various areas.

This court ruling meant the anti-fascist actions to
block them were only semi-legal, and were decried by
the right-wing parties (the CDU and Free Democrats) who
rule Dresden and Saxony and always condemn "both right
and left wing extremists" as equally harmful, though
mostly stressing the latter.

Just the same, over 250 anti-Nazi buses rolled toward
the city from all over Germany, with some from
neighboring countries as well. Many came by car or
train. The final number was estimated at well over
15,000, mostly but not only young people. I, surely one
of the oldest, was in a bus which left Berlin at 5.30
AM and reached Dresden after 9.00.  My young partners
in this exercise in civil disobedience were all
friendly, helpful and full of respect that an 82-year-
old joined them. But for the police, none of us were
respected! At the city limits sign we had to leave the
buses and walk, walk and walk, well over five miles,
with cordons of heavily armed and visored police at
every turn, blocking us off and splitting the group
into smaller and smaller units, with helicopters
circling overhead and snarling, barking dogs on the
ground. Some groups were met with tear gas and water
cannon. We were luckier.

About a thousand of us, sometimes using side streets
and paths through backyards, reached a spot within
sight of Dresden's main station where most Nazis were
due to arrive. A police barricade prevented us from
getting closer, and we saw nothing of them. So we
simply stayed put all day, sitting or standing in the
blocked-off street. It was a damp, freezing day, but
people kept their good mood the whole day. They came
from the youth and student sections of the Left party,
from youth sections of the Greens and Social Democrats,
from a few union groups, some direct antifascist
organizations, at least one atheist group, some with a
sign "Queers bash the Nazis" and a smaller group of
anti-fascist transvestites. I saw Turkish, Kurdish,
Iranian and Chilean  immigrants or exiles and quite a
few anarchists with red-black or black flags.

We learned per mobile telephone that similar groups,
some much larger, had assembled, despite police
chicanery, at other spots around the main station.

How many Nazis showed up? Estimates ranged from 800 to
3000. No one really knows since the police, to prevent
pitched battles, kept them in the station just like
2010. One possible exit point was suddenly blocked by
200 young people shouting a new slogan: "Alerta!
Alerta! Antifascista!" There were simply too many of
us! The police saw no way of letting the Nazis go to
their meeting site, where about 40 locals waited
disconsolately. Finally, totally frustrated, they gave
up; about 500 took the train to Leipzig, Saxony's
second city, but were not allowed to demonstrate there.
Late that night the media reported briefly that there
had been violence when a group of so-called autonomists
broke windows, set trash on fire and threw stones or
bottles at the police. The organizers of the action in
the buses had stressed our non-violent methods, with
all such actions taboo, but some always seem happy to
provide the desired nasty headlines for the mass media.
Many suspected that provocateurs had again been at
work. This gave the police, who had been sent in from
the most distant regions of Germany, to attack the
press center of the anti-fascist demonstration in the
building of the Left party, kicking in doors, hurting
one person and seizing computers. They suspected plans
for violence, they claimed.

But as our thousands made our way through town to get
to our buses (I was back in Berlin at 10.30), we were
certain that we had once again used a form of civil
disobedience, in the spirit of Thoreau and Martin
Luther King (but also in the fighting spirit of the
Lincoln Battalion and other volunteers in Spain 75
years earlier, and still using the slogan Non pasaran!)
and been able to prevent at least one fascist march.
They remained a hateful menace, but had suffered one
more real defeat and would perhaps give up on Dresden
in future. It was a hard day, especially for elder
participants like me, but more than satisfying.

I will close with a non-Elbe note about that glamorous
Defense Minister, Baron von und zu Guttenberg. After it
was found that his long doctorate thesis about
constitutional law in the USA and Europe contained
almost a hundred text sections from other sources
without quotation marks or footnotes, this go-getter
type was again in a corner. He insisted that he had not
committed plagiarism, but would drop his title of
doctor until the university made its decision. But the
suspicion arose, as yet unproven, that he actually did
not plagiarize, but that the whole lengthy thesis was
written by one or more ghost-writers, possibly research
aides in the Bundestag and paid for with taxpayer
money. Meanwhile more German soldiers he had sent to
Afghanistan were killed and wounded, shot by an Afghan
soldier in uniform, trained by NATO to take over. Such
training was the rationale for sending foreign armies
there.

It was indeed a weekend full of news.

___________________________________________

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