As of: February 4, 2024, 6:19 p.m
By: Wolfgang Schörner
Comments
Press
Split
There was a demonstration in Penzberg on Sunday.
© Wolfgang Schörner
More than 1,500 people took to the streets in Penzberg on Sunday to demonstrate for democracy and diversity as well as against right-wing extremism and exclusion.
After the opening rally on the town square, they marched through the city center with their posters.
The motto: “Penzberg remains colorful.”
Penzberg – “It’s great that so many people came,” shouted Clemens Meikis, one of the three initiators, at the start of the rally on the Penzberg town square.
“There are so many there that you can say: Penzberg is colorful and Penzberg remains colorful.” Initially, the number of participants in the town square was still under the 1,000 mark.
But when the demonstration started moving half an hour later, there were many more participants.
The police estimated the number at 1,200 people.
The organizers spoke of over 2,000 people.
A separate count during the demonstration showed that there were over 1,500 participants in each case.
The correct number was probably between 1500 and 2000.
“For democracy and diversity, against right-wing extremism and exclusion”
The rally was registered by Clemens Meikis, Gianna Lisci and Bärbel Scholz as private individuals for 1,000 participants.
Within two weeks, the three of them had put together the demonstration, said Gianna Lisci on the town square (“There are really an incredible number of people”).
We stand here “for democracy and diversity, against right-wing extremism and exclusion”.
“Never again is now”: The initiators led the demonstration through the city center.
© Wolfgang Schörner
The aim is to set “a symbol for democracy, a symbol for shared, respectful coexistence, a symbol for diversity and tolerance,” said Clemens Meikis, who gave the main speech on Sunday.
Penzberg, the city of 100 nations, has always shown that people are united in diversity and tolerance.
Meikis recalled the more than a million people who have taken to the streets in Germany in the past few weeks “because they are very worried.”
“That scares us, that outrages us”
He also recalled the meeting of right-wing extremists in Potsdam, which, according to research by investigative journalists from “Correctiv”, was aimed at driving people out of Germany on the basis of racist criteria.
“That,” says Meikis, “makes us prick up our ears, it scares us, it outrages us.” Here, “the values of our coexistence are being trampled on.”
The Shoah did not begin with Auschwitz, but with words
The value system of the right-wing extremists, he said, is “in fundamental contradiction to our Basic Law.”
They are now downplaying the meeting in Potsdam; they say there was only talk.
Meikis quoted Eva Szepesi, a Holocaust survivor, who spoke in the Bundestag at the memorial hour for the victims of National Socialism.
According to Szepesi, the Shoah did not begin with Auschwitz.
It began with words and with society's silence and turning a blind eye.
The rally began in Penzberg on the town square.
© Wolfgang Schörner
“So what can we do?” Meikis asked.
The demonstration was a start, but we had to continue to assume responsibility, “at least in our city, at least in our sphere of influence,” he answered the question himself. On a small scale, he said, you could raise your children democratically and vote yourself.
“The more Democrats go to the polls, the more it is guaranteed that basic democratic rights are preserved.” He also called for people to treat each other with respect, prevent lies and strengthen civil society.
At the end he quoted Marcel Reif's speech in the Bundestag.
He had received the advice from his father: “Be human.”
Meikis did not mention the letters “AfD”.
The posters – with exceptions such as “ekelhAfD” – were also mostly about positive messages: cosmopolitanism, respect, human rights and democracy – as a counterpoint to right-wing extremists.
The initiators themselves carried the banner “Never again is now” in front of them.
Thomas Müller and Alexandra Link-Lichius sang for the demonstrators on the town square itself.
At the end there was a song that became a Penzberg anthem years ago, sung by Thomas Sendl and Markus Bocksberger: the song by Rainhard Fendrich, adapted to Penzberg, “Because you have a heart like a mine.”