Opponents of public health measures failed to storm the Reichstag. However, nationalists' efforts to build coalitions with pandemic deniers should not be underestimated in the long term, DW's Hans Pfeifer writes.
Advertisement
It appeared to be spontaneous when a large crowd broke through the barriers in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin, the home to Germany's parliament, and stormed up the steps to push towards the glass entrance doors on Saturday. People waved banners and yelled slogans associated with various nationalist causes.
The "storm" was over quickly, the protesters kept in check by a few policemen. Other officers cleared the area. Though Saturday's events did not turn out as bad as they could have, nationalist groups in Germany are playing the long game.
In recent years, nationalists have employed an important political tool: patience. They did not need to occupy the Reichstag no matter the cost. The broadcasting and online sharing of footage of the attempt and the nationalists' fluttering banners will suffice.
Though the consumers of more mainstream media might remember Saturday as a day when little of consequence ultimately happened, the footage of the incident will be playing like a recruiting reel for nationalists on social media. This shows how dangerous the nationalists' plans are. They are being careful to avoid in the types of actions that have discredited their efforts over the past several decades.
On Saturday, the nationalists had no real plan to occupy the Reichstag: Their goal was to generate a great wave of indignation — and it worked. Their charge was condemned by the government, Bundestag lawmakers and the president.
German officials are, of course, right to frown upon such actions. The problem is that their responses do not take into account the fact that calculated indignation is integral to the nationalists' strategy: In recent years, the movement has increasingly engaged in such pinprick tactics. As a result, the public has become accustomed to these incidents, and the criticism that follows from politicians has become mere ritual.
The nationalists have camouflaged themselves to blend into the motley coalition protesting pandemic restrictions in Germany — and they have been more or less widely accepted. Though many of the demonstrators claim to not support the nationalists' message, the group has become one of the more vocal factions at the protests.
What's the plan?
The goal is a white supremacist society governed by Nazi ideology. According to the threats made visible on various placards brandished at the protests over the weekend — showing, for example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel in prisoner garb — current political leaders and journalists would be targeted, and people who are not white would be especially vulnerable.
In recent years, authoritarian governments have solidified their hold on power in Poland and Hungary. Groups that seek a more restrictive society have come a long way in Germany, too. On Saturday, police officers stopped a pack of them at the entrance to the Reichstag, but the most vocal and powerful nationalists already hold seats in the parliament. Since 2017, the euroskeptic Alternative for Germany has been the largest opposition party in the Bundestag — and has used its platform to constantly rant against Muslims, immigrants and their descendants, political opponents, churches and social institutions while its lawmakers increasingly undermine the country's liberal constitution.
The real danger inherent in incidents such as Saturday's is that people who are otherwise unengaged might underestimate the threat that the nationalists pose to democracy.
75 years after WWII: Memorials in Berlin
Following years of violence and destruction, the Second World War ended 75 years ago. Many memorials in Berlin mark the historic events or commemorate the victims.
On April 30, 1945, two Soviet soldiers hoisted the red flag on the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin. Even though it is now known that the scene for this photo was actually staged two days later, it remains one of the most famous images of the 20th century, symbolizing the victory over Hitler, the destruction of the Nazi party and the end of the Second World War.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
The German-Russian Museum
In this officers' mess in Berlin Karlshorst, the German Wehrmacht army signed the unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945. The German-Russian Museum exhibits the document, which was drawn up in English, Russian and German. The permanent exhibition provides information about the the war of annihilation led by the Nazis against the Soviet Union from 1941, which claimed around 25 million lives.
Image: picture-alliance/ZB
The Allied Museum
The western allies, namely Americans, English and French, did not get to Berlin until July 1945 when they took over the western sectors of the city. The center of the US forces was the Zehlendorf district. The former Outpost Theater cinema building is now part of the Allied Museum, which covers the period of postwar Berlin, including the 1948 airlift, up to the withdrawal of the Americans in 1994.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images/D. E. Hoppe
The Soviet War Memorial
A Soviet soldier holding a rescued child on his arm and a lowered sword over a shattered swastika — this huge monument towers above the Soviel Memorial in Treptow. The military cemetery is the final resting place for 7,000 Soviet soldiers who lost their lives in the fight for Berlin in the spring of 1945.
Image: picture-alliance/360-Berlin/J. Knappe
Commonwealth War Cemetery in Berlin
Some 3,600 Air Force soldiers, mainly killed in air combat over Berlin, are buried in the British cemetery on Heerstrasse. The honorary cemetery was built between 1955 and 1957 for the fallen soldiers from Great Britain and the Commonwealth States, especially Canada. It is still under special protection by the British Crown.
Image: picture-alliance/Arco Images/Schoening Berlin
Memorial to the German Resistance
The war almost ended a year earlier: On June 20, 1944, a group of German officers led by Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg tried to overthrow Hitler. But the assassination attempt failed and the officers involved were executed. The German Resistance Memorial Center remembers those who died while resisting the Nazi regime.
With about one million visitors annually, the documentation center Topography of Terror on Niederkirchnerstrasse is one of the most visited memorial sites in Berlin. From 1933 to 1945, this was the site of the headquarters of the Secret State Police Office and the SS — in other words, where the Nazi regime's system of terror was planned and managed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/P. Zinken
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
A wave-shaped field of 2,711 pillars commemorates the approximately 6.3 million European Jews who were murdered during the Nazi era. Directly underneath the Holocaust Memorial, changing exhibitions document the discrimination, persecution and systematic extermination of the Jewish people in the Nazi concentration camps.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Büttner
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on Breitscheidplatz was severely damaged in bombing raids in 1943. When it was to be completely demolished and rebuilt in the postwar years, Berliners protested. As a result, the 71-meter-high (233-foot-high) tower ruins were preserved as a highly visible memorial against war and destruction, for peace and reconciliation.