In August 1992, thirty years ago, a right-wing extremist mob set fire to the sunflower house in Rostock-Lichtenhagen. Neighbors and newcomers cheer while inside more than 100 people fear for their lives. As a young MEP, Claudia Roth went there shortly after the riots began – together with her parents. How does the Green politician view the events in the Hanseatic city today?
ntv: Can you remember the moment you found out about what was happening in Rostock-Lichtenhagen?
Claudia Roth: I heard about it on the news broadcasts and especially saw the pictures from Rostock, these pictures that seemed so strange and so unimaginable. Like a movie about lynching – horrible images of a screaming mob who want to accept that people are burned. It was pure, sheer, horrible aggression. Pictures of people who had to fear for their lives, who could only get to safety with the help of a wonderful, courageous man, Mr. Richter, even though his life was also in danger. I will never forget them. The so-called Sunflower House, where there were contract workers who feared for their lives because bottles of fuel were aimed at the house. That was terrible. That was an attack on people in our midst. It was open, cruel, ugliest racism ready to kill people.
(At the time, Wolfgang Richter was the city of Rostock’s commissioner for foreigners. He experienced the arson attack in the sunflower house and had to flee over the roof of the building himself.)
When and why did you decide to go to Rostock-Lichtenhagen?
Well, I was a European politician, but I was from Germany. This means that if something like this happens in Germany, it is of course also a task for MEPs to get an idea or raise their voice or show their face. When I was elected to the European Parliament in 1989, for the very first time there was a group of German MPs who came from an extreme right-wing background. This has created a great deal of excitement and concern in Europe. A committee against racism, anti-Semitism and racist violence in Europe was set up – with a special focus on what then happened in Germany. That means I traveled to Rostock as a German MEP and a member of this committee. And I traveled to Rostock as a person who had fought all my life politically against every form of right-wing extremism, racism and anti-Semitism – with my parents, by the way. We actually planned to spend a few days in the summer in the so-called new federal states. Of course, we definitely did not expect the trip to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to reach such a sad, terrible climax to this extent. My parents were deeply moved and deeply ashamed of this Germany.
What was your personal first impression of the people you met in Rostock? How did you meet them?
On the one hand there were the people who survived the arson attack. I have seen deeply frightened people who had to fear for their lives. I believe that if they could have, they would have left our country in a moment. Then I met upstanding, courageous people – from Rostock and people from all over Germany – who were horrified. They were ashamed and said: We take responsibility for taking a much stronger stand against racism and against a debate that led to changes in our Basic Law. It was the preliminary music, so to speak, that led to the very first fundamental right, one of the most important fundamental rights in our Basic Law, the fundamental right to asylum, being doctored about in a quarry and tightened up in 1993. But I also saw people who had at least latent understanding for the events in Rostock, who created hostile images of contract workers and refugees. I have met people who had absolutely no understanding of the fact that we live in Germany in a colourful, diverse society. And there was also an improper attempt to shift responsibility towards East Germany. According to the motto: This is typical East Germany, former GDR. And to pretend or give the impression that racism and racist violence have no place in an old West Germany. Which of course is not true. This was shown by the attacks in Mölln and Solingen and in many other places where refugee shelters were attacked, where people were racially attacked. This attempt to attribute racism as a purely East German problem was simply not correct.
Since then you have been to Rostock again and again. What is your impression: How is the history of the sunflower house being dealt with?
I believe that dealing with history should not be taken for granted. For example, when trees are planted as a memorial, they are cut down the next day. One notices that there is an environment of relatively clear support for right-wing extremism and racism, for hatred and exclusion. Especially the NPD and the right-wing extremists, who in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania were also very strongly represented in the state parliament and who have not disappeared. And that is why this visit to this place, the Sunflower House and remembering what happened thirty years ago is of great importance. Because it is a reminder of the present, where there is right-wing extremism, where there are attacks on people because of the color of their skin, their religion, their sexual identity, their origin. It is all the more important that we do not forget this deed, these horrible hours, but rather remember them. And that the Democrats should be loud and clear about it.
What do you associate with Rostock-Lichtenhagen today?
I associate it with horrible, most terrible racism, unbridled violence, hatred on the faces and the voices of people in front of a house that is set on fire, where there is hooting and screaming, although you know that people in this house are in danger of being burned to death. On the other hand, I connect civil society courage. Courage that was clearly part of contradicting, resisting and standing by these people’s side. To say: We need humanity and not hate. And these people have also become the heroes of these days for me. Because it makes a difference whether I stand up for equal rights in Berlin, Cologne or other cities today and whether I did it back then in Rostock – thirty years ago. Courage, walking upright, democratic awareness, humanity and taking responsibility, these are the real heroes of these days for me.
Kathrin Gräbener spoke to Claudia Roth
