Veronika Otto plays the cello and sings along. That’s one reason she revived an old song for this Saturday. It dates from 1915, around the time of the First World War, and made its way from the USA to Germany along winding paths. “I didn’t raise my son to be a warrior. I raised him as the pride and joy of my old age,” read two of the lines. It’s an anti-war song, Otto explains. “I want to make a mark.”
The second reason why she is standing here in front of the Hotel Adlon in the cold and sleet is that the rally is barely 100 meters away, the “uprising for peace”. The politician Sahra Wagenknecht and the women’s rights activist Alice Schwarzer called for this. She wrote six e-mails to the organizing committee, says Otto, she wanted to perform her song on stage. There will only be verbal contributions, Alice Schwarzer finally answered.
Around 3 p.m., Veronika Otto is one of an estimated 13,000 demonstrators who have gathered at the Brandenburg Gate. And if you want to roughly summarize the Berlin rallies around the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, it could go like this: While thousands of people were on the streets here on Friday in support of Ukraine, including those with weapons, a day later there were thousands , demonstrating for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations.
Hundreds of blue flags with a white dove of peace are being waved, an elderly man is carrying a large cardboard sign with Picasso’s painting “Guernica” from the Spanish Civil War. “Stop the destruction of Ukraine,” reads it. A young woman is standing on Strasse des 17. Juni with only a small note on her jacket: “Good and evil only exist in fairy tales.”
Alice Schwarzer or not: the demonstrators shout “Sahra, Sahra!”
A couple in their 50s made the journey from Fulda. “I’m not a leftist,” says the woman, “I don’t care who’s on the stage either.” She just doesn’t want a war, she says. She is also concerned with the future of the children, she is an educator. Then she talks herself into a rage about the arms shipments, finally laughs and says, “I’m just so angry.”
Wagenknecht then greets their audience as “dear friends of peace”. And the affection returns immediately in the form of “Sahra, Sahra” calls. Alice Schwarzer or not, Wagenknecht is without a doubt the activist of the heart. Above all, she is a politician who apparently still has big plans in the coming weeks and months.
Wagenknecht leaves no doubt that she is not on the stage in front of the Brandenburg Gate to give a speech, but to found a new political force. “We need a new peace movement in Germany,” she calls out to the masses. And: “We are now starting to organize ourselves.” She leaves it open whether she also has the idea of founding a party sooner or later. The party Die Linke, of which she is still a member, does not mention her at all in her 20-minute appearance. Wagenknecht announces: “From now on we will articulate our voice so loudly that it can no longer be ignored.” Quite obviously, this “we” no longer means the Left Party.
Wagenknecht wants to distance himself from the right at the demo, rather less from Putin
One of the few things that is undisputed about Wagenknecht is her rhetorical skills. And that she knows how to inspire people across all political camps, she also shows this Saturday. She grew up in the 1980s with the fear of a “mushroom cloud over Berlin”. In the meantime she has forgotten what it feels like to be afraid of a war. “Today I know again,” she breathes into the microphone. And it is also this feeling that undoubtedly strikes a chord with parts of the population.
Wagenknecht has been under suspicion for some time that she is willing to extend her great sense of unity to national conservative circles and at least accept the applause of the AfD. Right at the beginning of her speech, she tries to counter this accusation aggressively. She says attempts have been made to put her movement in “a right-wing corner” in order to defame her. “Since when is the call for peace right?” she calls out to the people. It goes without saying that neo-Nazis and citizens of the Reich have no place at this demonstration, says Wagenknecht. But since that is not so self-evident, the event has been highly controversial for days.
The background to the rally is the “Manifesto for Peace” that the two women posted on February 10 as a petition on the Internet. In it, Wagenknecht and Schwarzer call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and for peace negotiations. The appeal has also been heavily criticized because it negates the Ukrainians’ right to self-defense. But above all because of the list of supporters of the manifesto. Half a million people signed the petition within just over a week, and on Saturday afternoon there were 650,000 signatures.
A number of well-known artists, scientists and liberal politicians were among the first to sign. At the same time, right-wing extremists are trying to hijack the manifesto and the call for themselves. Not only AfD co-boss Tino Chrupalla claims to have signed the appeal. “Anyone who wants to demonstrate with us for peace with an honest heart is very welcome,” Wagenknecht said repeatedly before the event.
The enemy images are not Putin or the right, but the federal government
Even less clear than with far-right free riders, she remains on stage this Saturday in her demarcation from the originator of this war, Vladimir Putin. “Of course” her appeal for peace also goes to the Russian President,” she says at what is probably the most Kremlin-critical part of her speech, but only to start the next sentence with a loud “but”. The Turkish peace initiative at the very beginning of the war According to everything that is known, Putin did not fail, says Wagenknecht.
In any case, the enemy images with which she creates a mood in the snowstorm of Berlin are different. Andriy Melnik, for example, whom she describes as Ukraine’s “former bully ambassador,” and “our warmongers,” by which she obviously means the German government, above all Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Greens. “How can you be so war-drunk,” shouts Wagenknecht. The co-chair of the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Amira Mohamed Ali, is apparently so enthusiastic about all of this that she later tweets: “Wow! Tens of thousands were at the peace demo today.”
Wagenknecht’s co-activist Alice Schwarzer is next, and she then sets completely different accents, less the political, more emphasizing the emotional. Schwarzer describes it as a “pure pleasure” to experience all the flags and the whole atmosphere here. The fact that, among other things, a dove of peace flies on a Russian flag background and someone on a banner demanding “End the racist baiting of Russia” may not have been apparent to black people from the stage above. But maybe she didn’t look too closely before announcing: “If we continue like this, we’ll get a little humanity back into politics.”
One thing is certain, Wagenknecht’s Baerbock bashing is much better received. While Schwarzer is still talking, a large part of the peace pack is already on its way home. The organizers have obviously nominated the wrong keynote speaker.
Some rights try to determine the demo in vain
When the rally then broke up later in the afternoon, there were apparently minor scuffles between pro-Russian demonstrators and sympathizers of Ukraine in front of the Russian embassy. However, the police can resolve this quickly: the situation is “very relaxed” and only “sporadic expressions of displeasure” are perceived.
In fact, the leader of the meeting had explained the rules of the game like a referee before the rally began. Wearing uniforms is just as forbidden as showing Russian flags or martial symbols like the “Z”. Flags of Russian separatists or maps of Ukraine without the areas in the east are also forbidden. When a young man then wants to distribute the newspaper of a radical opponent of the Corona measures, a folder goes to him immediately. He studies the paper briefly, says it’s not allowed here and sends the newspaper deliverer behind the barriers that are distributed around the Brandenburg Gate.
However, this did not prevent well-known right-wing extremists from attending the event. Among them Jürgen Elsässer, who is holding a small event of his own with a few men next to the rally. Elsässer is editor-in-chief of the magazine Compact, he has been trying for some time to bring right and left extremists together. During the demonstrations against the Corona policy, he tried to form such a transverse front together with other right-wing extremists. Most recently, so-called lateral thinkers and AfD supporters mingled in a peace demonstration in Munich on the occasion of the security conference.
On Saturday, too, not far from the rally, the drum groups known from corona demonstrations will pass. “It’s just a small spade, a small war, a big sinking,” reads the sign of a man in a cap and parker. But these demonstrators do not succeed in shaping the rally.