Attack by young neo-Nazis: "It was a violent frenzy"

Mr Bussmann, how are you?

Stephen Locke

Correspondent for Saxony and Thuringia based in Dresden.

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Thanks for asking.

I still have some pain, but otherwise okay.

what happened to you

I left the office at 8:30 and then walked home when I saw a group of young people from afar who were loud and shouting.

At first I wanted to go on, but then I kept hearing “Sieg-Heil” shouts and saw them doing the Hitler salute.

So I went straight to them and said that I think that sucks.

They were teenagers, not hooligans, so I probably would have kept running.

But I found all of this completely inappropriate.

How was the reaction?

They immediately attacked me, yelled at me, and one slapped my face.

There were maybe six or seven kids and three of them were extremely aggressive.

A boy has literally worked himself into a violent frenzy.

I'm rather robustly built, but he kept kicking me in the back and slapping me in the face.

Then my glasses broke.

Luckily a city bus came and I was able to stop it on the street.

I then went in and asked the driver to let me out at the police station.

I was really scared that they would come after me.

Shortly thereafter, the police were able to apprehend five young people, the youngest 15, the oldest 20 years old.

I filed a complaint that evening and I hope that serious consequences will now follow.

They had absolutely no awareness of the situation, it was unbelievably brutal.

You have been living in Chemnitz for four years.

Have you or a friend of yours ever experienced anything like this?

In 2018, when I was brand new in town, I was bullied during the riots that were going on at the time.

It was in the realm of the unbearable tolerable.

But the attack now seems like a throwback to the 1990s, when neo-Nazis were beating up in many cities.

I want to make it clear right away that you can meet drunk young people who yell neo-Nazi slogans and fight around in every German city.

But I also don't want to trivialize the fact that there are a few Chemnitz specialties.

What do you mean by that?

There is too much of a quiet center in Chemnitz.

The number of right-wing extremists is probably no greater than elsewhere, but that of right-wing populists is probably.

But the silent majority is a problem.

Most of them would probably have walked past the group screaming "Sieg Heil" and would have had their peace.

But I think that's wrong.

If the social middle always stays out, the loud, radical minority dominates the picture.

We must not put up with that.

Chemnitz will now be the European Capital of Culture in 2025.

Is this a setback for the project?

No.

In the application, the city didn't even try to sweep right-wing extremism under the carpet, but made the problem and how to deal with it an explicit topic.

I think that's a good thing, and we at the art collections will also be involved.

After the riots in 2018, we had already initiated a so-called Open Space directly behind the Karl Marx head in the center.

Various social groups met there for films, exhibitions and discussions.

The city urgently needs such spaces of cohesion.

In Münster, where I come from, it's the weekly market, for example.

That doesn't happen that way in Chemnitz, where the different parts of society don't meet that easily.

That's why we want to revive this open space now.

This was planned before the attack on me,

Don't such projects carry the risk that well-meaning people meet there and assure each other of their well-meaning?

It is quite clear that this will never reach all parts of urban society.

And I'll tell you quite frankly: I don't want to argue with right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis.

I refuse.

But you can create alliances, bring actors together and give people from the quiet center the feeling that they matter.

This is a central element of the application for the Capital of Culture: We want to help overcome the powerlessness that many feel, and which is then directed against an imaginary elite, “those up there” and stimulate self-efficacy.

Everyone has to feel valued in order to take on responsibility.

That's why I stepped in, I didn't want to look the other way.

That's why I'm not a hero, as some now think.

No, I think something like that should be a matter of course.

You yourself made the attack public via Twitter.

What were the reactions?

Very many very solidary reactions, from the mayor to the prime minister, who called me immediately.

I'm quite flabbergasted by the great sympathy and encouragement from many citizens, but also from museum colleagues.

All of that encourages me a lot.

Will you stay in Chemnitz?

Everything is still very fresh.

I am very thoughtful about how to proceed.

At the moment, however, I have the feeling that we, i.e. the city and also the region, have to get out of this situation together.

In the neighboring town of Zwickau, the art association is constantly threatened by neo-Nazis.

All of this must now finally be addressed and tackled.

I see great importance in democratic education and schooling.

For example, my son is in fifth grade and only has two hours of history every two weeks.

Saxony, on the other hand, attaches great importance to STEM subjects.

But that's not enough, that's obviously a deficit.