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So-called lateral thinker demo in Bad Cannstatt (archive, symbol image)
Photo: Ralph Peters / imago images / Ralph Peters
Some participants break out of a so-called lateral thinker demo, run to the steps of the Berlin Reichstag building and wave Reich war flags - this incident caused horror last summer. Countries like Bavaria rushed forward and found their own regulations to take action against showing these flags from the imperial and Nazi era in public. Now, however, Germany's interior ministers want to act together.
The so-called model decree for police and regulatory authorities is now available, said the chairman of the conference of interior ministers, Thomas Strobl.
"We have thus found a solution for a nationwide uniform handling," said the CDU politician in Baden-Wuerttemberg before the conference of interior ministers next week in Rust in southern Baden.
"With a topic like this, I think it is inappropriate and could not understand it when individual countries implement an isolated solution."
The Reich war flags show three horizontal stripes in black, white and red and are intended to question the existence of the Federal Republic.
In recent months, these flags have been shown more often at demonstrations by so-called Reich citizens, right-wing extremists and corona deniers who protested against the federal government's corona policy.
When the flags should be taboo in the future
In the opinion of the interior ministers, the flags are increasingly used by right-wing extremist groups as a symbol and substitute for the banned swastika flag.
With the decree, the authorities would have a framework to "consistently take action against the misuse of Reich flags, Reich war flags and other symbols, especially by members of the right-wing extremist scene," said Strobl.
According to the Minister of the Interior, specific indications are given as to when there may be a danger to public order: for example, when such flags are hoisted at a place or date with historical symbolic power.
Even if xenophobic slogans are chanted, such flags may not be shown.
They are also taboo at "seemingly paramilitary gatherings, for example by combining them with drums, torches, uniforms, marching in formation or appearing to be based on National Socialist flag marches," it says.
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Letter from the Ministry of Justice and the Interior: The federal government apparently does not want to legally ban imperial war flags
The term Reichskriegsflaggen therefore includes the war flag of the North German Confederation and the German Reich from 1867 to 1921, the war flag of the German Reich from 1922 to 1933, the war flag of the German Reich from 1933 to 1935, the Reich flag from 1892 and the flag of the "Third Reich" from 1933 to 1935.
If there is a danger to public order, the police and law enforcement authorities should prevent showing and secure the flags.
The flag wavers have to reckon with a procedure because of an administrative offense.
Demand for legal prohibition
Critics had called for a much more far-reaching regulation, namely a legal ban on the Reich war flags and banners.
Elmar Esser, the chairman of the board of the German-Israeli Lawyers Association, wrote in a letter to Interior Minister Horst Seehofer in January "urgently for a legal ban on provocative display of imperial flags, imperial war flags and similar symbols."
The flags stand for "xenophobia, anti-Semitism and contempt for democracy," wrote the Cologne lawyer.
"They are used by opponents of the free and democratic basic order, consciously exploiting a loophole in the law, for their anti-constitutional goals."
BMI State Secretary Hans-Georg Engelke and BMJ State Secretary Margaretha Sudhof replied in February.
In the letter to Esser, according to a report by the »Tagesspiegel«, it is important to consider »that there should not be an unworthy cat-and-mouse game between legislators and extremists that are always new - previously neutral or even positive ones - could adopt symbols and flags as their own. «The federal and state governments should rather agree on a uniform practice and, with the help of the right of assembly, stop the display of the controversial symbols.
Fok / dpa