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1/11
Flags in the wind:
The flag of the German Empire is currently waved frequently, especially during demonstrations against the Corona protective measures, here on August 29, 2020 in front of the Reichstag building.
The black-white-red flag is not forbidden, but stands "for the rejection of the current political system: parliamentarism, liberal, representative democracy and its elites," said Marburg historian Eckart Conze in an interview with SPIEGEL.
Photo:
Fabian Sommer / dpa
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2/11
Ten-minute triumph of the radicals:
Reich citizens with Reich flags in front of the Reichstag - in Berlin right-wing radicals and followers found a gap in the police force, overran the barriers and stormed up the stairs to the Reichstag building to celebrate themselves and later post pithy souvenir selfies can.
Chats in messenger channels show that the idea had been around for a long time and the implementation of upheaval fantasies was discussed.
Conze reminds the scene that "the enemies of the Weimar Republic fought democracy under the black-white-red flag of the empire".
Photo: NurPhoto / Getty Images
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3/11
Substitute material:
neo-Nazis would like to wave the swastika flag right away, but they are not allowed to.
Because the use of anti-constitutional symbols threatens penalties, they often resort to the imperial flag, like these around 300 supporters of the dwarf party Dierechte during a march on May 1st in Essen.
Photo: Jochen Tack / imago images
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4/11
The empire fell in 1918.
The monarchy lives on in the minds of right-wing extremists.
They like to wave flags with the face of Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Right), who led the German Reich into the First World War and then had to abdicate, as well as Reich war flags (2nd from right).
The picture shows a 2015 Pegida demonstration in Berlin's government district.
Photo: imago stock & people / imago / IPON
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5/11
The
Reichskriegsflagge
, as used by the Nazis with the swastika and iron cross, is banned today.
Right-wing demonstrators mostly resort to other, modified versions, as here on August 30, 2020 near the Brandenburg Gate.
In the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic there were several variants of the Imperial War flag.
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
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6/11
Right-wing extremists also like to wear
the so-called
Wirmer flag
, like here at a Pegida demonstration in Leipzig in 2015.
This small, radical minority sees itself not only as "the people", but also, with this flag, as "resistance fighters" - namely in the succession of Count Schenk von Stauffenberg.
The Wehrmacht officer and his allies failed in their attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944;
most of them paid with their lives for it.
The flag was designed as the new national symbol by the resistance fighter Josef Wirmer, who supported the assassination plan and was executed on September 8, 1944 immediately after a show trial before the "People's Court".
Photo: Jens Meyer / AP
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7/11
What exactly do racists and neo-Nazis want to have in common with the resistance against the National Socialist dictatorship?
That's hard to understand.
"These people see themselves as part of a Stauffenberg tradition," "Zeit" columnist Mely Kiyak has tried to explain.
"They believe that if they let themselves be driven to a demo on organized bus trips with a pumpernickel and pee break, that has the same status as if they had left a briefcase in Wolfsschanze."
Photo: Jan Woitas / picture alliance / dpa
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8/11
Where has the German Reich gone?
In the heads and, only in real Fraktur, on the T-shirts of right-wing extremists - as here in 2016 at a demonstration in Berlin that right-wing groups like the NPD, Pegida and HoGeSa had called for.
Historian Eckart Conze sees clear continuities from the Kaiserreich to National Socialism: "The society of the Kaiserreich was extremely hierarchical, the belief in the inequality of the people was strong, also the racism and the exclusion", he says in the interview.
"This created the prerequisites for the broad acceptance of the persecution of Jews among the Germans, which eventually culminated in the murder of the Jews."
Photo: imago stock & people / imago / IPON
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9/11
Aphorisms for Germany
: Otto von Bismarck is revered by many right-wingers until today.
Here, the Young Alternative for Germany, AfD's youth organization, brings a quote from the "Iron Chancellor" to the participants of the 2019 Federal Congress in Magdeburg on a poster - "Where the must begins, fear ends".
Photo: Peter Gercke / picture alliance / dpa
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10/11
Controversial Chancellor
: Bismarck ruled the German Empire from 1871 to 1890.
Immediately after his resignation, a wave of Bismarck homage began with innumerable monuments as well as squares, streets, places or ships that were named after him.
Many of them still exist today.
In June 2020, this Bismarck statue in Hamburg was smeared with red paint when numerous colonial monuments were attacked or removed from their pedestals in the course of anti-racism protests around the world.
Photo: Jonas Klüter / dpa
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11/11
Eventful history
: The Africa explorer, colonial official and officer Hermann von Wissmann brutally suppressed uprisings of the local population in East Africa under the colonial rule of the Germans at the end of the 19th century.
There were protests against the Wissmann monument in Hamburg as early as 1961;
it was attacked in 1967 as part of the student movement and overturned from its pedestal in 1968;
In the noughties there were further color attacks.
From October 2016 the damaged figure was then shown for seven months in the Berlin exhibition "German Colonialism" (photo).
Photo: Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert / dpa
