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Leipzig for seven years on Mondays: demonstrators in traffic jams
Photo: LISI NIESNER / REUTERS
"We're going to turn around now," calls the woman who announced the Monday demonstration into a megaphone.
"No, we're staying here," calls a man, also raising his voice.
"I, as the leader of the meeting, tell you now, we're going back," calls the woman.
"Resistance, resistance," boomed around them.
The situation is somewhat similar to the scene with the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea
from the Monty Python film The Life of Brian.
Except that nobody here feels like laughing.
About 1300 people came to the demonstration in Leipzig on Monday evening.
They call their request heroic »Leipzig gets up«, they carried signs saying »Ami go Home« and »Corona is a lie«.
They sang the Italian protest song "Bella Ciao" and chanted slogans like: "Have you got a tit, down with the prices".
Now they are mostly standing around, 500 counter-demonstrators have sat down on the street in front of them on the Ring, blocking the way.
The others now have to ask themselves: stay or go?
It's not the first time such a spectacle has been performed on the Ring.
In Leipzig, you can visit several demonstrations on almost every Monday for the past seven years.
It started in January 2015 with Pegida, which is called Legida in Leipzig, followed by demos against the government's corona measures, and then came the opponents of vaccination.
Now it's the protest against German support for Ukraine, the "hot autumn," as they now call the lukewarm days.
Sometimes, some say way too often, all these issues get mixed up into one demonstration mush.
One might think that this has been going on for so long that there is no longer any reason to get excited.
But they did exist in the run-up to the Monday demonstrations this Monday.
For two reasons: On the one hand, many right-wingers wanted to celebrate an anniversary on this day.
Exactly two years ago there was one of the largest demonstrations of lateral thinkers in Leipzig since reunification.
More than 45,000 people came to Leipzig at the time, too many for Augustusplatz.
The protesters poured into the surrounding streets, the police were completely overwhelmed, journalists were attacked, "We are the people" shouts rang out over the ring.
With the idea of being able to celebrate such a success again, the right mobilized in the social networks.
And then there was the thing with the torches: the right-wingers wanted to take "six to eight" of them.
Shortly before the anniversary of the November pogroms, this caused outrage in Leipzig civil society.
Especially since the train was supposed to pass stumbling blocks and a Leipzig synagogue.
Too much for the alliance »Leipzig takes its place« – the logical counter-position to »Leipzig stands up«.
The action network called for blockades.
Because the city had originally approved the march of the right with torches.
"Only under public pressure did the assembly authorities ban torches during right-wing marches," said Irena Rudolph-Kokot from the action network.
Nevertheless, some torches could be seen as the right-wingers set out from Augustusplatz.
But they didn't run for long.
Because the action network had stuck to its call to block the right.
Without much effort, 500 people sat down on the ring around 7:45 p.m.
The right-wingers actually wanted to march along there and stage themselves as the heirs of the peaceful revolution, just like they did two years ago.
To express their dissatisfaction with this appropriation, representatives of the Nikolaikirche and the Thomaskirche had previously hung banners on their walls: "22 is not 89," it read, and: "We do not live in a dictatorship."
Large images of stumbling blocks were glued to the street next to the seated people.
"No forgiveness, no forgetting" was written on them.
The sit-ins on the ring forced the right to turn around.
At least the part of them that chose to follow the leader of the meeting.
The others wanted to 'resist' and not allow themselves to be 'managed' by the assembly authorities.
But without a leader, they just stood around a little longer and then left the ring in small groups.
Since the beginning of September, more than 4,400 demonstrations like the one in Leipzig have taken place across Germany - more than 100,000 people took to the streets nationwide every week.
References were always the Corona policy, the Ukraine war or the climate and energy crisis.
However, according to a survey by the »Welt am Sonntag« based on figures from the assembly authorities, the majority of these rallies took place in East Germany.
The protests will also continue in Leipzig.
This time the demonstrators had to turn around.
But rallies are again registered for the next Mondays.
And again there will be objections.
