SPIEGEL:
At the weekend, Corona demonstrators stormed the stairs of the Reichstag building in Berlin with black, white and red flags of the German Empire.
Did the scene shock you?
Conze:
It horrified me in its aggressiveness - but not surprised.
Rather, it reminded me that the enemies of the Weimar Republic fought democracy under the black-white-red flag of the German Empire.
SPIEGEL:
Why is the imperial flag so popular with the demonstrators?
To person
Icon: enlarge Photo: Sven Simon / ullstein bild
Eckart Conze
(born 1963) is Professor of Modern History at the Philipps University of Marburg.
His research focuses on the 19th and 20th centuries.
His book "Shadows of the Empire. The founding of the empire in 1871 and its difficult legacy" appears on September 18.
Conze:
It stands for the rejection of the current political system: parliamentarism, free, representative democracy and its elites.
For some, the flag of the empire also serves as a substitute for the swastika flag, which is forbidden.
The black-white-red flag has evidently found itself as a common political symbol of protest against the existing order.
SPIEGEL:
Do the demonstrators really want to go back to Kaiser Wilhelm?
Conze:
Hardly.
But by resorting to the empire, they make it clear that they want a different kind of political order than the democratic and liberal one of our time: a strong nation, a strong, authoritarian state, an empire.
And certainly many think ethnically and racistically and want a homogeneity of the population, as it largely existed back then.
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