Is Saxony a “heartland of lateral thinkers” with a “recalcitrant” population?

Such suspicions arose when the second wave of the corona pandemic was rampant in Germany and Saxony was one of the hardest hit countries.

The number of infections reached record levels, and in the months of November, December and January, in some cases twice as many people died in the Free State as in the same period in previous years.

It was speculated that social, spatial and politico-cultural factors could have exacerbated the infection process.

Stefan Locke

Correspondent for Saxony and Thuringia based in Dresden.

  • Follow I follow

    For example, the thesis that there were more corona infections in regions with above-average election results for the AfD because the party and parts of its supporters did not take the pandemic seriously or even against simple measures such as wearing mouth and nose protection was popular Made mood.

    The two dozen protesters who marched in front of Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer's (CDU) home and spread conspiratorial theses there were also remembered.

    Scientists from the Forum for Migration and Democracy (MIDEM), which is located at the TU Dresden, have now got to the bottom of the question of how the Saxons have coped with the pandemic so far.

    Ambivalent result

    For the first representative study in mid-May of this year, the scientists asked 1008 people in Saxony about their personal exposure to Corona, their assessment of the pandemic-related restrictions and crisis management, their willingness to be vaccinated and their propensity for corona-related conspiracies and protests. The result is ambivalent, said study director and political scientist Hans Vorländer. On the one hand, the attitudes of the Saxons to the corona policy “did not differ fundamentally from those in Germany as a whole”. The thesis of the “heartland of lateral thinkers must therefore be rejected”. On the other hand, “the corona critics camp is particularly pronounced in Saxony”.

    Above all, it was shown that people perceived the restrictions associated with the corona measures less as an economic-financial, but above all as a social and psychological burden. While three quarters of those surveyed had no or hardly any economic problems as a result of the pandemic, two thirds said that they found the restriction of social contact with family, friends and neighbors to be extremely stressful. Younger people in particular felt much more stressed than older people.

    The evaluation of the protective measures turned out to be differentiated: More than eighty percent consider the obligation to protect the mouth and nose to be sensible and almost as many reject night curfews.

    However, when day-care centers, schools, shops, restaurants and cultural institutions are closed, supporters and opponents are in balance.

    The latter also applies to the government's corona management.

    A good half of the respondents said they were satisfied with the Corona policy - with that of the Free State even more than with that of the federal government - but just under half were not either.

    However, this did not necessarily plead for a relaxed approach to the pandemic; on the contrary, fifty percent of the dissatisfied would have wanted even tougher measures.