Defending democracy in East Germany: You can do more than demonstrate

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Demonstration on Erfurt Cathedral Square

Photo: Jacob Schröter / dpa

When people talk and write about East Germany and argue about it, it is usually about the past. And about how it influences the present. In 2024, the future will also be largely decided in East Germany.

Three state elections will take place in autumn 2024 in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia. Three very different federal states with different political starting positions. What they all have in common is a strong AfD in the current polls. In addition, a new Wagenknecht party was founded. There is a lot of excitement about all of this in the federal states, but also in political Berlin. And then the year starts with research by the Correctiv network, which shows that right-wing extremist networks are connected to politics and business. In addition, explicit plans are being drawn up to deport and expel people from Germany.

This research alarmed a large part of the majority of society and large demonstrations took place in January 2024 in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Halle, Leipzig and Potsdam and many other large and small cities in Germany.

While many people in the white majority society only now have the feeling that they finally have to stand up for democracy because it actually seems to be threatened by majorities in state election surveys, the threat to people in a marginalized position has long been real. They report privately and publicly about very specific moving plans. They avoid federal states for vacation trips and are committed to ensuring that the daycare center does not make its annual trip to Brandenburg. Civil society projects and socioculture are worried about their financing and left-wing activists are protecting themselves. The threat of a shift to the right has been noticeable to many for a long time. A particularly visible reaction was a tweet from ZDF presenter Mitri Sirin, who explicitly announced on several social media channels that he would stay in Germany and want to stand up for democracy here.

Political resistance and activism are also possible in different regions. The social scientist and board member of the “miteinander eV” association in Magdeburg, David Begrich, also rightly points out on Hegemonies in some regions of East Germany can also be dangerous.

This must also be taken seriously by politicians. Let us take the example of the Federal Government Commissioner for the new federal states. On the one hand, Carsten Schneider (SPD) rightly demands that people, especially in East Germany, should stand for election at the local level. Democracy only works if people are prepared to take responsibility at the small-scale political levels. At the same time, this is a cheap proposal from Berlin, when the AfD already has a majority in some municipalities and public socio-political visibility can also mean a threat.

In recent years, we have observed that political leaders are increasingly being threatened both digitally and in public spaces, even reaching into federal political circles. In 2019, the CDU politician Walter Lübcke was murdered, representatives of federal politics are regularly insulted and harassed, and just recently a federal minister was prevented from leaving a ferry on his vacation.

Running in local elections means appearing at local meetings, and in small towns the candidates' places of residence are usually known. You meet in sports clubs, at school, in one restaurant in town or in the supermarket. Politics is not anonymous in East Germany. This also applies to political protest. It is a great success that 10,000 people protested in Leipzig and Potsdam. However, it is even more likely that more than 1,000 people took to the streets in Greifswald, Stralsund and Görlitz or that people regularly meet on the B96 in Zittau and demonstrate against right-wing normalization.

The subsequent journey home is planned carefully and you don't walk alone. The experience of right-wing violence in the 1990s has allowed local people to develop strategies and makes good networking even more important, especially in eastern German cities. From our research into the connection between the memory of this right-wing and racist violence and the negotiation of racism and the city in the current migration society in the research project “RäuMig - Spaces of the Migration Society” of the DeZIM research community, we know how closely these three areas are connected. Mass demonstrations by the social majority for democracy in Berlin and Cologne are nice and desirable, but it is important that this is also possible in small and medium-sized towns.

Fortunately, one can also look at these cities in East Germany positively and optimistically, because there are still civil society actors everywhere who are committed to democracy locally and, because of the 1990s, people are also experienced in dealing with the threat from the right .

To give a private example: There was a racist, violent attack in 2020 where I live in a very small town in Brandenburg. Around 25 people immediately came together in a public space and organized a demonstration against racism. Thanks to a lot of commitment, almost all clubs, parties and businesses, as well as the mayor, were motivated to call for this demonstration. The sports club, the fire department, the cultural club, the electrical shop and the carpenter were on the call flyer for this demo. On a cold November day in the middle of the second Corona lockdown wave, over 300 people stood on the street wearing masks and demonstrated against racism. Converted to the number of inhabitants of the city, that would have been 150,000 people in Berlin.

What was needed: Trusted networks that were created through voluntary collaboration on many levels (cultural and sports festivals, initiatives, Christmas markets, etc.), neutral and public spaces to meet, commitment to a topic and the knowledge that a critical mass is coming together and there won't be five of you standing on the market square. All of this was available in the place in question.

People from Berlin, Leipzig and Cologne can also start here. By finding these networks and spaces and supporting them sustainably through regular donations or by attending events. At the same time, support for the infrastructure mentioned by federal and state policy is relevant. Demonstrating on Pariser Platz is wonderful, but there is more that can be done.

For example, cultural associations can be supported. In almost every federal state there is a mobile right-wing victim counseling service that can provide targeted help with its local knowledge. In East Germany, many migrant self-organizations have been founded that do very important work. They can be found under the umbrella organization DaMOst. And then there are all these small rooms, e.g. B. the workshop 26 in Königstein, which was recently awarded the integration prize of the state of Saxony, the initiative “platz*machen”, which created a space in Magdeburg that allows many different initiatives to meet, or the “Zukunftsladen” in Rostock, which, as an open space, has also become an important contact point for refugee women.

As written at the beginning. The future of democracy will be particularly challenged in three federal states in eastern Germany in 2024. But there is no reason to be pessimistic about it.