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The Jungfernstieg and the surrounding areas are filled with demonstrators.
© Jonas Walzberg/dpa
Many thousands of people followed the call to demonstrate against the right-wing in Hamburg - apparently too many.
Because emergency vehicles can no longer get through the crowd, the organizers pull the emergency brake.
Hamburg - Tens of thousands of people came to the demonstration against the right-wing and the AfD in Hamburg on Friday - so many that it had to be canceled for security reasons.
“We have to end the rally early,” said Kazim Abaci from the Entrepreneurs Without Borders association, which co-organized the demonstration under the motto “Hamburg stands up - together against right-wing extremism and neo-Nazi networks”.
He raised safety concerns on Friday.
People in the crowd have already collapsed and the fire department can no longer get through.
After Abaci initially spoke of 130,000 participants in the Jungfernstieg, the organizers later corrected the number to 80,000.
Police said there were 50,000 demonstrators.
If you add the many people who were still stuck in the surrounding streets and tried to reach the rally site, the number would be much higher, Abaci told the German Press Agency.
The demonstrators were also tightly packed in the streets around the rally site on Jungfernstieg.
Several thousand also made their way to the town hall, around which there was actually a 350 meter perimeter.
The crowd chanted slogans like “The whole of Hamburg hates the AfD.”
The rally was originally supposed to take place on the town hall market.
The AfD made this impossible by registering a group meeting at short notice.
This meant that there was a 350 meter perimeter around the town hall.
Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) sharply attacked the AfD at the rally.
“The message to the AfD and its right-wing networks is: We are the majority and we are strong because we are united and because we are determined not to let our country and our democracy be destroyed a second time after 1945.”
When the Potsdam meeting became known, we learned “that right-wing radicals in Germany are planning a coup and a systematic so-called remigration of millions of citizens of our country,” he said.
This shows how quickly populism can turn into anti-constitutional, anti-democratic and inhumane activities.
The very word “remigration” is an outrageous trivialization.
“They want deportation.
They want to turn back time, back to a time of hate and violence,” said Tschentscher.
The mayor also did not accept the AfD's argument that the meeting in Potsdam was a “private” event.
He doesn't care at all: "Anyone who plans to deport people is a right-wing radical enemy of the constitution - and nothing else!"
The acting council chairwoman of the Evangelical Church in Germany and Hamburg Bishop Kirsten Fehrs said: “As churches, we will not and must not remain silent - not today and not tomorrow either, because Christian faith and ethnic thinking do not fit together - just as the cross and swastika do not.” When fantasies of expulsion spread, a creeping, wet frost spread across the country.
“We don’t want the social climate to get colder - this is also a climate change that we have to stop - now.” There can only be one answer: “No to any form of racism and anti-Semitism.”
The general manager of the employers' association UVNord, Michael Thomas Fröhlich, said that employers in this city did not regularly take to the streets to make their arguments known.
“But we as employers in this city know that the time has now come for us to no longer be silent, to no longer hold back.” He speaks for more than 50,000 companies, many of which have given their employees permission to take part in this demonstration.
Now a tough battle for arguments begins.
“We have an overarching issue here that determines the welfare and woe of this country.
(...) We stand firmly together here.” Hamburg’s DGB chairwoman, Tanja Chawla, emphasized: “Hamburg stands up against right-wing extremist incitement and against right-wing extremist networks.”
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The demonstration also brought together people who are otherwise in close opposition when it comes to sports.
Flags of the HSV Supporters Club flew right next to those of St. Pauli to the right.
The Commissioner of the European League of Football and the city's sports ambassador, Patrick Esume, said that when he reads on social networks that sport should stay out of politics, "then I have to tell those who don't understand, racism and Democracy is not political, but primarily social issues and concerns all of us.” dpa