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Demonstration in Simmern (Rhineland-Palatinate) against the appearance of AfD leader Weidel on Friday evening

Photo: Thomas Frey / picture alliance / dpa

This weekend, tens of thousands of people in Germany took to the streets against right-wing extremism until Saturday afternoon. Once again, the meetings also took place in many smaller towns across the country.

For Friday,

bank manager Christian Eymery collected reports of 39 demonstrations with more than 50,000 participants on the X platform, formerly Twitter.

These included larger gatherings such as those in Kiel, with around 5,000 people according to the police, and in Simmern, Rhineland-Palatinate, where around 4,000 people demonstrated against an event with AfD co-leader Alice Weidel in the Hunsrück Hall. The city has around 8,000 inhabitants. According to the police, around 500 people were expected at the AfD's "citizen dialogue".

But hundreds of people also gathered in smaller towns such as Bückeburg (500 people), Ostrhauderfehn (350) and Lütjenburg (300)

on Friday evening

to demonstrate against right-wing extremism. In Güstrow there were 350 people - in the eastern German states most of the demonstrations this weekend are planned for Saturday.

According to police reports, around 20,000 people came together in Freiburg by early afternoon on Saturday

, around 10,000 in Mainz, and around 5,000 participants in Kassel. “Everything is calm, everything is relaxed,” said a spokesman. In Darmstadt, too, the police said: “Everything is peaceful, no abnormalities.” Around 3,000 people took to the streets here.

According to the police, there were around 120,000 people in the area around the Reichstag in the early afternoon in Berlin due to the drizzle, but there is still an increase in numbers. 100,000 people registered. A human chain was planned under the motto “We are the firewall”. Behind the campaign against hate and for tolerance is an alliance called Hand in Hand with more than 1,300 organizations.

Editor's note: We made a typo in the headline in an earlier version. We have corrected it.

fdi/dpa