Ah, Cottbus!
How beautiful is the city when you travel from Berlin on the autobahn through the light woods, less than two hours away and yet not a suburb, but a different world, as soon as the trucks that drive to Poland and further east have disappeared, the Prefabricated housing estates have given way to renovated art nouveau, baroque and other old buildings.
Past the “Marlene” beauty salon with a photo of the great diva in the shop window, who refused to accept the Nazis, the Altmarkt spreads out in the heart of the city, quiet, clean, well-groomed.
But what do the many police cars that constantly cross the square on an ordinary Saturday afternoon mean?
A few police officers get out, look around, and slowly drive on.
And the next patrol car follows immediately – is it football today?
Are there fears of serious riots in the regional league, in which FC Energie Cottbus, which is now even active in the Bundesliga, is now moving?
"But no," says the annoyed waitress as she clears the plate: "there's people gathering somewhere for a walk."
At times, the tram stopped operating
As is well known, such “walks” are now understood to mean unannounced demonstrations against the Corona measures throughout Germany and beyond.
"Isn't that usually the case on Mondays?" "Not here, they leave here almost every day." With 100,000 inhabitants, Cottbus is the second largest city in Brandenburg after Potsdam and the center of the still-coal region of Lusatia.
Unemployment was 5.4 percent in October 2021, and the trend is falling.
This is not the poor house of Germany.
Nevertheless, there have been xenophobic demonstrations for years and for some time now there have also been loud protests against the Corona measures.
But the people who are relaxed here pushing their prams across the square, carrying their purchases home, standing together with coffee mugs in their hands,
you can't quite imagine yourself as a radical corona denier.
And yet there were more than 700 people who marched through the city in the evening, at times even the tram stopped running so as not to endanger anyone.
At the same time, more than 300 visitors were seated at the premiere of Gerhart Hauptmann's "The Beaver Coat" at the Cottbus State Theater.
In this socio-critical “thief comedy”, premiered in 1893 at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, the little people defend themselves more or less skilfully against the authorities, poaching because they have nothing to eat and stealing wood because it is too cold in their houses.
In the end, director Armin Petras unites friends and enemies, the mayor and the wealthy pensioner, the laundress and the ship's carpenter, the skinhead and all the others from the Brandenburg provinces in his production for a boozy feast under the open sky.
Pack strikes itself, pack is compatible?
Sensitivities and power relations in the East
Or does the director, whose reputation as an advocate for the oppressed and offended suffered badly as a result of the accusations of racism made against him in April 2021 by a dark-skinned German actor, want everyone to reconcile and love each other, no matter what the opposites separate them from?
Can you here in Cottbus, to quote a phrase that is as common as it is problematic, “talk to the right wing” – because the AfD had 23.5 percent of the votes in the last state election in 2019?
"It is important to make a very precise distinction here," says Stephan Märki, who has been director of this last four-division house in Brandenburg since the summer of 2020: "We want to do our best to help the resigned, the angry, also the protest voters - you become the Reich citizens and wild Corona deniers hardly reach it." Märki listened to the people,
which obviously entrusted him with more than the banners of “Zukunft Heimat” (“Draw boundaries!”, “Snout full!”) proclaim.
This right-wing extremist organization organizes, among other things, the Cottbus "walks" with foreign sympathizers.
Now, on the other hand, municipal cultural institutions have joined forces under the motto "You don't walk with your right hand".