It remains to be seen whether the visit of the Army Music Corps on March 16 will be a hit with the public. The vehicle show of the mountain troops on February 24th and 25th is more likely to attract curious onlookers, although the Bundeswehr in Augsburg does not have to worry about a lack of attention at the moment. The armed forces have moved into a pop-up store in the city for a few weeks, they want to “get in touch with the people in the Augsburg metropolitan region” and “introduce the Bundeswehr as an employer”. In the first few days, this worked well, that can already be seen. However, not for everyone in the way the Bundeswehr actually has in mind.
The contact with the demonstrators on Friday, for example, was rather uncomfortable. In a statement to the press, the climate campers, among others, who now want to say something about almost every topic in Augsburg, criticized the fact that the Bundeswehr advertised itself in the shop with “obstacle courses” and “pithy sayings”. It is not at all necessary, like the climate campers, to pull out the big caliber and castigate the recruitment of minors by the Bundeswehr with a very high reference to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Critical voices are also increasing in the city, who simply find it strange that Augsburg is renting this pop-up store to the Bundeswehr for weeks, when it is actually intended for artists and start-ups who are “part of the Augsburger Stadtgesellschaft” and design, produce or partially produce their products in Augsburg or the region.
The city has now announced that the Bundeswehr, as the user of the shop, came about at very short notice due to another failure. Actually, things like second-hand branded clothing or grain-free baking mixes are offered there. However, there have also been users in the past who, like the Bundeswehr, are not directly part of Augsburg’s urban society, but rather come from a supra-regional institution. Very pragmatically, says economics officer Wolfgang Hübschle, the topic of recruiting young people and skilled workers is currently one of the main topics on the job market. So why not the Bundeswehr for a few weeks? In Nuremberg, a similar constellation finally attracted numerous visitors last year.