Thousands of people are demonstrating against the government’s policies in several cities in eastern Germany. The protests are largely peaceful. However, concerns about a “critical autumn” remain.
Thousands of people demonstrated in eastern Germany against the high prices and against Russia and energy policies. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, according to the first counts, a total of more than 11,000 demonstrators came together in about 20 places on Monday, including around 4,500 people in Schwerin, as a police spokesman said in the evening. According to preliminary information from the police situation center, around 3,000 demonstrators were on the move in Saxony-Anhalt. According to initial information from the police in Thuringia, there were thousands of people. There were initially no concrete figures for Saxony – but according to a police spokeswoman, there were around 1,000 demonstrators at the start of the demonstration at 6:30 p.m. in Leipzig alone.
The protests were directed, among other things, against the corona measures, the war in Ukraine, the energy shortage and rising inflation. AfD and Linke had already announced a “hot autumn”, extremists are even hoping for a “winter of rage”. Chancellor Scholz had announced in his summer press conference that there would be no social unrest. “And that’s because Germany is a welfare state.” In the past few weeks, the SPD, Greens and FDP had put together several relief packages with a volume of around 100 billion euros to mitigate the consequences of rising prices in many areas of life for citizens.
Hamburg’s head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Torsten Voss, is now expecting a “critical autumn”. “It is to be expected that extremists from right to left will try to occupy and exploit these issues for themselves,” he told the “Hamburger Abendblatt”. They wanted to connect with mainstream society. “Enemies of the constitution from right to left are trying to bridge the gap into society by pretending false facts.”
“It will probably be a critical autumn. It is up to the education and information policy as well as the consistent action of all security authorities and the social-democratic forces as a whole to prevent a so-called hot autumn,” he said. “Although I’m not a friend of such catchphrases, which are not very suitable for a serious analysis, nor of any coup scenarios.” Possible violent actions are difficult to predict.
