What's
Wrong with Saxony? A Search for the Roots of Fear and Racism
By
Maximilian Popp, Andreas Wassermann and Steffen Winter
February
25, 2016 – 07:05 PM
For
a time after reunification, Saxony was widely considered an eastern
German success story. Lately, however, the state's image has
darkened. Weekly Pegida marches combined with an ongoing rash of
anti-immigrant attacks are raising uncomfortable questions.
Horst Hirsch saw it
all coming. He warned that all of Germany could start looking like
Duisburg or Cologne, metropolises with a large and visible immigrant
populations. He warned that the country would begin losing its
identity in the face of foreign influence. He wondered out loud: "Do
we want our country to become Islamic?"
Hirsch, a
72-year-old from the Erzgebirge Mountains in southern Saxony, made
his comments on Jan. 21, 2015, almost a full year before the New
Year's Eve sexual assaults in Cologne. He was at a meeting of 300
citizens of Saxony who had gathered in Dresden's International
Congress Center to talk about asylum and integration with political
leaders. For weeks, the anti-immigrant group Pegida had been marching
on the streets of Dresden and the state government wanted to counter
that movement with an open dialogue. By chance, Hirsch ended up at a
table with Saxony Governor Stanislaw Tillich, a member of Chancellor
Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.
That evening, Hirsch
said he was concerned about becoming a foreigner in his own country
and that he was worried about the "militant ideology of Islam."
It was also the evening when Tillich, seated at table 26, made a
clear statement: "Islam does not belong to Germany."
One year later, the
Saxony governor doesn't have second thoughts about his statement that
night. But he is beginning to despair of his state. It is a sunny
morning at the end of January in Dresden and frost still covers the
meadows on the banks of the Elbe River as it meanders through the
city. Tillich opens his office window in the state capital building
to let in some fresh air.
Every Monday,
Tillich has to watch as thousands of his fellow Saxons march through
the historical town center waving Pegida flags. Many among them have
long supported the CDU, but now accuse Tillich of being a
"Volksverräter," a Nazi-era term that means "traitor
to one's people." The governor feels isolated on such days.
Where are the churches, the labor unions, the business community and
the artists? Why are there so few people standing up to Pegida? "It
is a challenge for all of society," Tillich says.
A Riddle of
Significant Concern
The weekly protests
against the presumed demise of the West have been ongoing in Dresden
for more than 12 months, and they are set to continue. Pegida
organizers have already reserved city-center squares for their
demonstrations through the end of March.
What is wrong with
Saxony? It is a riddle that is of significant concern to Tillich and
also one that has people across the country shaking their heads. It
has also attracted attention internationally, with Time magazine
recently putting a Pegida demonstration on its cover along with the
headline: "Unwelcome."
Recently, the
state's image has become even darker. Last Thursday evening, an angry
mob chanting "we are the people" blocked a bus full of
refugees from pulling into an initial reception facility in the city
of Clausnitz, near Saxony's border with the Czech Republic. The
resulting video, which clearly shows the fear of the refugees inside
the bus, some of them children, quickly spread around the country and
beyond. Then, on Saturday night, a planned refugee hostel in the
Saxon city of Bautzen, just east of Dresden, went up in flames in
what police are now calling an arson attack. Some onlookers attempted
to prevent the fire department from extinguishing the blaze and
"demonstrated their undisguised pleasure that the building was
on fire and that asylum-seekers likely won't be able to move in very
soon," Thomas Knaut, from the Bautzen police, told SPIEGEL
ONLINE.
The state's image
has suffered tremendously as a result of such blatant racism and the
negative effects on its economy have become noticeable. Tourists are
staying away and scientists from abroad are cancelling planned visits
to Saxon research institutes and universities, not wanting to spend
time in Pegida's homeland. The xenophobic demonstrations "are
destroying Dresden's image in the world," complains Christian
Thielemann, principal conductor at the Staatskapelle Dresden, the
city's celebrated orchestra. He would like to see a ban on
demonstrations in the city center.
Prior to the
beginning of the Pegida marches, the city was famed for its high
culture: the Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vault) museum, with its treasure
chamber created by August the Strong, the Staatsschauspiel theater,
the city's collection of masters, both new and old. A 2012 PISA study
found the state's education system to be the best in Germany and
Dresden is widely considered to be an economic motor of the former
East Germany. But now? Anti-immigrant groups in the state register
around 40 demonstrations per week. One-fifth of all attacks on
refugee hostels in Germany occurred in Saxony last year, according to
Mediendienst Integration, an organization which assembles facts and
statistics pertaining to refugees in Germany. Leipzig Police
President Bernd Merbitz has warned of a "pogrom-like atmosphere"
against migrants in the state.
It has often been
said in recent months that the public mood regarding refugees in
Germany is in danger of becoming nasty. In Saxony, it already has.
The state offers a prime example for what happens when civil society
partly fails and when discourse is non-existent.
Thankful for Pegida
In Flöha, a town
near Chemnitz, Horst Hirsch is sitting in the small kitchen of his
ground-floor apartment, pictures of his eight grandchildren and four
children hang on the wall behind him. An amicable man with silver
hair, eyeglasses and a full beard, he was monitored by the East
German secret police, the Stasi, before the Wall fell and his
children were not allowed to enroll in university. He earned his
living working for an Evangelical youth group.
The table is set
with blue-onion patterned tableware and a flagpole rises outside.
Next to the kitchen window hangs the Order of Merit of the Federal
Republic of Germany, which he received in 2003 from then-German
President Johannes Rau for his involvement in youth work, for his
principled resistance to the East German regime and for his
engagement on behalf of Roma from Romania.
This same Horst
Hirsch has taken part in Pegida demonstrations -- out of curiosity,
he says. But also because he is happy "that there are people who
open their mouths. That releases some of the pressure." Hirsch
thinks that Germany should be thankful for Pegida "because
step-by-step politicians have adopted positions long demanded by the
demonstrators from Dresden."
Hirsch believes the
German government has moved to the left, a shift that isn't popular
in eastern Germany, he says. He sees the reemergence of old socialist
ideologies that promise people a kind of paradise. One example, he
says, is Merkel's refugee-crisis insistence that "we can manage
it." It is, he says, an attempt to manipulate the populace in
accordance with one's own needs and to silence critical voices.
"People in the east notice such things because we've seen it
before. We've experienced forced education and patronizing," he
says. People, he goes on, don't want Islam and the refugees have to
respect the country's traditions instead of "putting on airs."
But what are the country's traditions? "Christianity. That's
what defines the social order in Germany."
Statistics show that
4 percent of the populace in Saxony is Catholic and 19 percent
Protestant. Fully 75 percent are unaffiliated with any religion.
Forty years of socialism effectively drove religion out of the state.
Hirsch is nevertheless convinced that this religious tradition holds
the state together. And that Islam represents a threat to this
traditional social order. The events in Cologne on New Year's Eve,
which saw hundreds of women being sexually abused on the public
square in front of the train station by a mob made up primarily of
migrants, proves as much, he believes. He argues that the state must
crack down and the police must become more proactive. Incidents like
in Cologne, he says, "are the first fruits of negligent
politics."
Fear of
Multiculturalism
But why haven't
people in western Germany drawn the same conclusions? Why have there
been no mass protests there? Hirsch believes it is simply because
western Germans are out of practice. Eastern Germans realized in 1989
that taking to the streets can lead to change. Although Saxons are
cosmopolitan people, Hirsch says, they are afraid of the ideology of
Islam and of multiculturalism. He believes that the demonstrations in
Dresden will continue. "Because the problem is ongoing and
because there are no significant elections approaching that might
change things."
The conversation
with Horst Hirsch in his kitchen was largely congenial. He didn't
refer to journalists as the "lying press" as Pegida does,
instead calmly presenting his point of view. Could such a discussion
perhaps be the foundation for a broader societal debate?
Not long later,
Horst Hirsch sent a furious email to the SPIEGEL editorial offices.
He was upset about a critical cover story about the right-wing
populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and suddenly no longer
wanted to be quoted by name in a "leftist organ," which is
why we have chosen to use a pseudonym, Horst Hirsch, to refer to him.
During the interview, he was pleased by the attempt to start a
dialogue, but in the email, he made it clear that the conversation
was over. "Even the sweetest broth tastes terrible if the pot is
dirty," he wrote.
It is difficult to
understand why it is Saxony where the rhetoric has grown so radical,
positions so obdurate and space for exchange and compromise so
limited.
Many people have
been monitoring this development for quite some time, and one of them
is Omar Allham. He, too, has taken part in marches in Dresden --
counterdemonstrations protesting against Islamphobia and fears of
foreigners felt by people like Hirsch. Born in Syria, Allham joined a
demonstration of perhaps 150 people on a central square in Dresden to
defend the city's diversity against thousands of Pegida fans. Allham
still can't understand why more people didn't show up. "You have
to show that Dresden is more than just Pegida," he says.
Allham has been
living in the Saxon capital for 22 years. He came to East Germany
from Damascus in 1986 to study medicine. During his university years,
Allham says, he encountered no racism at all. "We came from
different countries, were friends with other students from Germany
and we all had a common goal: to become good doctors," he says.
'Happy to Make It
Home Safe'
All that changed
suddenly with the end of East Germany, with taunting, threats and
even physical violence becoming a common occurrence. "Often, I
was just happy to make it home safe," Allham says, recalling the
early 1990s when skinheads and neo-Nazis in the east hunted down
immigrants, often without fear of police interference.
Allham long ago took
on German citizenship and works in the Heart Center at the Dresden
university hospital. He lives in a middle-class, Gründerzeit
neighborhood in eastern Dresden. Like Hirsch, he too believes in God,
though Allham's god is called Allah. And in contrast to Hirsch,
Allham doesn't believe that religion should have anything to do with
politics.
A look at Saxony's
history could help explain why potential threats to identity may be
felt more strongly here than elsewhere. It was in Saxony where the
Reformation put down its first roots. Johann Sebastian Bach developed
his artistic genius here and Saxony also developed its own formula
for the manufacture of porcelain, a triumph of German chemistry. "All
of this made Saxony a breeding ground for ideas, the center of the
world," says Martin Roth, who led the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen
-- the world-famous collection made up of several art and
ethnographic museums in Dresden -- for years before moving on to the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Yet Saxony has also
long had a problematic relationship with its own identity. The region
was the cultural heart of the German-speaking world, but its Prussian
neighbors to the north were much more powerful. It was well educated,
had a self-confident middle class and didn't lack for prosperity, but
the region was nonetheless among the first to throw its support
behind the Nazis. The state suffered World War II bombing raids on
its capital comparable to those in Hamburg and Cologne, but it was
only in Saxony that a cult of mourning developed -- one that
continues to hold sway to this day.
"In Dresden,
you can still sense the loss of identity during and after the Third
Reich," says Roth. "What remains is this self-importance,
this navel gazing, combined with the belief that they are the
greatest."
Just a few
kilometers up the Elbe River from Dresden is Kötzschenbroda, a
district of the town of Radebeul. Gabled houses from past centuries
surround the central square, their ground floors providing quarters
for small shops or comfortable pubs with names like Old Dispensary or
Steam Ship, where the odor of Saxon specialties is unmistakable.
Author Jörg Bernig
moved to the tidy little town 14 years ago, renovating a 19th-century
house together with his wife. Now, the place is just as attractive
and comfortable as the Old Dispensary. Bernig could be completely
satisfied with life. But the 52-year-old feels estranged from his
country, its politicians, the media and the cultural scene. Bernig,
who is a member of the Saxon Academy of Arts and the German PEN
Center, is bothered by what he sees as a political correctness that
imposes multiculturalism and ignores "people's need for
homogeneity."
'Rage Everywhere'
A sign printed with
a verse from the Book of Matthew hangs in Kötzschenbroda's main
church: "Quoth Christ: For I was a stranger and you invited me
in." Such "campaigns dictated from above," Bernig says
during a walk across the churchyard, "are what upset the people
in Saxony." He says they also alienate churchgoers "who
reject the policy of unlimited admission of refugees."
"Rage
Everywhere" is the title Bernig chose for an essay he wrote
about his views on the state of Germany and of a world that has
become unmoored. The piece includes ideas that can also be found at
the Pegida marches in Dresden, though they are more elegantly
articulated.
Instead of using the
loaded Pegida term Volksverräter, Bernig writes: "What rage
over the federal government's brushing aside of state sovereignty by
opening the doors -- even appealing for -- mass uncontrolled, or
hardly controlled, border crossings."
Instead of adopting
the phrase "Lügenpresse," or "lying press," he
writes: "What rage too that we, the people, to use a term of
pathos, are daily told how to think. Look at the chastening tone and
view adopted by (the evening news) when discussing people who express
criticism of refugee policies."
The Dresden-based
daily Sächsische Zeitung was wary of printing the piece, but it
ultimately appeared on Dec. 21 and met with broad agreement. "Thank
you for the courage to publish this piece," wrote one reader.
Another opined that it was no longer possible "to be proud of
Germany" and that one could only "think and speak in terms
acceptable to the 1968 Zeitgeist."
The term "1968
Zeitgeist," referring to the anti-establishment counterculture
that evolved in Germany in protest against the conservative war and
immediate postwar generations, is a central battle cry in Saxony. The
societal modernization that took place in West Germany following the
student revolts at the end of the 1960s is seen by broad swaths of
Saxon's educated middle class as a fundamental evil. Modern and
conflict-prone Germany has never been well received in Saxony, and
not just in the narrow valleys of the Erzgebirge Mountains. Even
members of the educated middle class in Dresden harbor yearnings for
yesteryear. Such desires survived East Germany by way of the house
concerts and poetry readings held in private salons -- and they
informed the historically accurate rebuilding of Dresden.
A Glorious Past
The reestablishment
of a pre-socialist civil society was one of the most important goals
for them following reunification. It was an urge that Kurt
Biedenkopf, the West German CDU politician who became governor of
Saxony in 1990, recognized and encouraged. He realized that people
are better able to deal with political upheaval if they can look back
to a glorious past and cultivate a feeling of homeland. He took
Bavaria, with a similarly proud history, as an example.
At the CDU's
initiative, state parliament resolved to declare Saxony a "free
state" once again, recalling its 19th century history.
Politically, it was a rather meaningless move, but it was full of
symbolism. The people of Saxony were enthusiastic and it also served
the needs of those in power. As the man who gave Saxony its identity
back, Kurt Biedenkopf could stand up to his political adversary
Chancellor Helmut Kohl in a way that only Bavarian Governor
Franz-Josef Strauss had before him. At the time, SPIEGEL wrote a
cover story about Saxony, with Biedenkopf depicted on horseback as
Saxon Prince August the Strong. A poster of the cover image still
hung in the governor's office years later.
Dresden-based
political scientist Hans Vorländer believes that one of Pegida's
roots can be found in such regionalism. He speaks of a kind of "Saxon
chauvinism": the idea that Saxons know what's right and are thus
entitled to more than others.
In Kötzschenbroda,
the author Bernig -- who has received numerous literature prizes
named after the likes of Eichendorff, Hölderlin and Lessing --
searches for other words to describe the Saxon character. Citizens of
the Free State, he says, are not "outmoded," they just want
to protect their state. They have been forced to endure significant
changes since 1990, he says. "Now they need time to reflect and
take a deep breath. They don't want the conflicts of other cultures
imported."
Yet when it comes to
conflicts in Saxony, it is primarily the locals who are responsible,
as can be seen from reports gathered on a random winter weekend: In
Chemnitz, three masked men chase two migrants through the city and
demolish a döner-kebab stand, injuring the owner and one of the
migrants. In Bautzen, two men attack the information stand of a
pro-diversity organization. On the same weekend, right-wing
extremists set a former asylum-seeker hostel on fire. In Altenberg, a
town in the Erzgebirge Mountains, a man wearing a steel helmet and
sporting a Hitler moustache goes after two Afghans. He beats one of
the two men and raises his arm in a Hitler salute.
In Meissen too, home
of the famous porcelain factory, a building being prepared to house
refugees was set on fire. Prior to the blaze, there were anonymous
warnings: notes posted on the door telling future residents to leave
"our Meissen" as quickly as possible.
Harmful to the CDU's
Image
The target of the
arson attack is just a few hundred meters from the porcelain factory,
which received 90,000 visitors from abroad in 2015. "Some people
in Meissen only like foreigners when they spend money and then leave
the city again at 6 p.m.," says Walter Hannot.
Originally from the
Rhineland, Hannot has lived in Saxony since 1991. He has been a
member of the Christian Democrats since his youth and has been deputy
head of CDU chapter in Meissen for just short of a year. He has
organized candlelight vigils against racism and thrown parties for
refugees. But many of his fellow party members aren't particularly
pleased by such events, believing them to be harmful to the CDU's
image. One CDU member, who used to be part of the city government, is
one of the founders of Pegida and has written hate-filled postings on
his Facebook page. But the local party chapter has nevertheless
declined to expel him from the party. Another Christian Democrat from
Meissen, Geert Mackenroth, became Saxony's commissioner for
foreigners, but prefers to call himself the "commissioner for
natives" and has adopted positions represented by Alternative
for Germany.
In such a climate,
it has become difficult to represent other points of view. One group,
called "Buntes Meissen," or "Diverse Meissen,"
promotes cooperation between Saxony and the refugees. But many shop
owners prefer not to display the group's posters for fear that they
might get a brick through their shop windows. "There are patrols
in the city," says Hannot. "I'm beginning to feel foreign
myself here in Meissen."
Saxony's racism
problem hasn't just developed in the last year. There have long been
regions of the state where neo-Nazis have essentially taken control.
The escalation of right-wing violence, Pegida's success, xenophobic
demonstrations: Dietrich Herrmann, a social scientist at the
Technical University of Dresden, believes that it's no accident such
things are taking place in Saxony. Rather, he argues, it is the
product of the state's political culture. For years, he says,
manifestations of right-wing extremism have been ignored and
trivialized in the state.
Andrea Hübler, who
works for an organization that helps victims of right-wing violence,
agrees. "For years, very little has been done to counteract the
daily lunacy in Saxony," she says. Every day, reports about
attacks on migrants land on her desk. On behalf of her organization,
Hübler has spent countless hours in recent years at trials against
right-wing extremist perpetrators. Her evaluation is devastating. She
says that it often takes years before perpetrators end up in court
and potential right-wing motives are all too often ignored. She says
that the oft-invoked judicial severity is rarely seen in practice.
Instead, activists
who actively campaign against racism and neo-Nazis are hassled.
Anti-fascists, opposition activists and refugee helpers are often
seen as disturbing the peace or meddling -- or are perceived as a
threat. For a time, Saxony even had a so-called "Extremism
Clause" enshrined in law, a codex that required initiatives to
formally pledge allegiance to the state. The Saxon Police Force
likewise spent years investigating a presumed "Antifa Sports
Club," which was suspected of hunting down neo-Nazis in Saxony.
The police raided apartments, forced people to take DNA tests and
eavesdropped on more than 200,000 telephones. A year and a half ago,
the case was dropped. The alleged leader of the group was only proven
to have taken part in a peaceful demonstration against neo-Nazis.
'Problem on the
Left'
When over 250
neo-Nazis and hooligans laid waste to the Connewitz neighborhood of
Leipzig in January, the head of the Saxon Police Force, Jörg
Michaelis, issued a warning -- against left-wing extremism and not
against right-wing violence. Left-wing anarchists had engaged in a
street battle with police in Leipzig just before Christmas. "We
have a serious problem on the left," he said at a CDU event in
Dresden.
And now? Will
business as usual in Saxony continue for the next several months, or
even years? Has the public peace been compromised to such a degree
that there is no longer room for understanding, or even for measured
debate?
There are places in
Saxony where politicians, church leaders, artists and businesspeople
stood up to Pegida from the very beginning. In Leipzig, for example,
the largest city in the state. On Monday, Jan. 11, Mayor Burkhard
Jung, a member of the center-left Social Democrats, joined thousands
of other Leipzig residents, candle in hand, to demonstrate against
Legida, the local chapter of Pegida. The organizers of the original
in Dresden had called for a large rally in Leipzig, but their success
was limited. Racists and Islamophobes have never had much success
here, regularly encountering large groups of counter-demonstrators,
as often happens in cities in western Germany.
Why is Leipzig
different than Dresden? Jung doesn't have an immediate answer to the
question. He thinks for a while, gazing into the middle distance. He
then leans over the table in his city hall office and says: "Leipzig
is constantly changing and renewing itself. Half of our population
has turned over since 1990. Many new residents have come over from
the west." Like the mayor himself. Jung grew up in Siegen, near
Cologne, and first came to Leipzig in 1991. So has Leipzig become a
western German city? "In terms of its approach to life, I would
say yes," Jung responds. "At least we are cosmopolitan,
because of the trade shows we host, and not too Saxon."
Even in Dresden,
though, there have been periodic signs of improvement. It used to be
that the anniversary of the Feb. 13, 1945 bombing of Dresden brought
out thousands of neo-Nazis protesting the "bomb Holocaust."
There were demonstrations this year too, but they were smaller -- and
dwarfed by the 13,000 people who formed a human chain in opposition
to war, xenophobia and extremism. "Those who close their hearts
to people who come here looking for protection haven't understood the
message of Feb. 13," said Dresden Mayor Dirk Hilbert.
Just five days
later, though, when the chanting mob blocked the refugee bus in
Clausnitz, Dresden's mini-victory against extremism proved empty.
Then came the refugee hostel fire in Bautzen. What's wrong with
Saxony? The search for answers goes on.
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