The dialect of the Austrian neighbors doesn’t sound as sexy as Conchita Wurst aka Tom Neuwirth. In glitter pants and with a short glitter net shirt over the chest, the brown hair wildly tousled, the trademark, the full beard knitted tightly around the chin, the diva from Upper Austria jumps onto the stage at Marienplatz on Sunday evening.
The 2014 Eurovision Song Contest winner is the main act and conclusion of Christopher Street Day (CSD). Several thousand people are crowded together on Munich’s Rathausplatz. They were waiting for Neuwirth.
Thousands of eyes are focused on him, and the singer has the golden Mother of God on Marienplatz in mind. “Dirty Maria, please let me go. You know my weakness is the bleakness without you,” sings Neuwirth. My weakness is the desolation without you. Is that blasphemy in this place? More of a remarkable coincidence.
The song “Dirty Maria” is a love song, and the theme of love is a big one this evening, especially at the CSD. It’s about love that wants to be lived, no matter how and between whom, as long as it’s consensual. It’s been almost ten years, says Neuwirth, that he won the ESC in Copenhagen with “Rise like a Phoenix”. In a tight dress with a beard and long hair, the fictional character Conchita Wurst became the role model.
It was okay for the community for a while, he calls into the microphone. “But now it’s going to be Oarsch again.” And then he encourages his audience: “We’re here, we’ll continue to exist. Fucking unstoppable!”
Conchita Wurst at Marienplatz: “Fucking unstoppable!”
(Photo: Florian Peljak/Florian Peljak)
Never before have so many people celebrated at a Munich Pride as this weekend. There were 520,000 on Saturday, that’s a record. On Sunday, more than 10,000 came to the city center to watch the breakneck Pumps Race and music acts such as Damien Prince from Munich, drag artist Pandora Knox and Conchita Wurst.
On Monday, the police also reported an attack on the CSD weekend. A 17-year-old from the district of Augsburg and a 21-year-old from Munich were “insulted with LGBT-hostile content” by a stranger at the main train station on Saturday evening. When the 17-year-old defended himself, he was also physically attacked by the woman. A male companion of the unknown insulted and threatened the men.
A drag performer also writes on Instagram that he was followed and insulted by men after the performance. The artist writes about his anger at having to be afraid just because one behaves “queer” and is dressed differently from the norm. Numerous Kotz emojis can be found on the channels of the Munich CSD.