A planned accommodation for up to 500 people is causing unrest in the Upper Bavarian village of Warngau. The responsible district administrator is booed, a citizens’ meeting escalates – how could it come to this?
In Warngau in Upper Bavaria, not far from Lake Tegernsee, the idyll is currently severely disturbed. Asylum accommodation for up to 500 people is to be set up in the community of 3,900 residents – this is what the district office of the Miesbach district, to which Warngau belongs, is planning.
At a town meeting At the beginning of February there were tumultuous scenes in the “Zur Post” inn: Around 400 people squeeze into the overcrowded event hall, with the same number watching the action on loudspeakers outside the door.
Whistles for the district administrator
“It was emotionally charged from the start,” says District Administrator Olaf von Löwis (CSU) in an interview with ARD-Politics magazine Contrasts. He was there to explain the plan. As soon as he steps on stage he is booed.
Von Löwis then reads questions from the population: “Can it be ruled out that young men visit the surrounding playgrounds and bathing facilities?” Von Löwis comments visibly indignantly: “These people are not criminals.” This statement is followed by loud boos and whistles.
Even when he later referred to the Basic Law anchored Human dignity is called, there are boos. The security, von Löwis later reported on the ZDF talk show “Markus Lanz”, “led him out of the hall via the back entrance” after the event and put him in a police car.
Several tractors are said to have stood threateningly in the way of the police car, and the Munich public prosecutor’s office is investigating coercion.
Mobilization against refugee policy
It was foreseeable that there would be protests in the area. But the truth is that a kind of reckoning over refugee policy was mobilized far beyond the local area. In the Whatsapp group “Miesbach in the Resistance,” for example, activists called for people to come to Warngau.
“This has to be effective in the media, nothing can go forwards or backwards,” it says in a voice message. Another writes that “only the big bang will help.”
In the run-up to the citizens’ meeting, large posters appeared in the area: an overcrowded ship with refugees races through the Warngau town sign. “No to mass asylum accommodation,” it says next to it.
At the event itself, a woman opened the question and answer session, introducing herself to great applause with the words: “Alexandra Motschmann, the basis, ValuesUnion and AfD.” To Contrasts says Motschmann, who ran for the Bundestag for the lateral thinker party “Die Basis”, saying that she wanted to say that it was about people, not about parties. In fact, her speech seems like the opening of a tribunal by right-wing parties.
Heated atmosphere
One person who particularly fuels the mood is Lorenz M. He shouts at the district administrator that he has to “keep his ass in his pants” and tell the state government: “We’re not going to carry on like this anymore!” M., who received a lot of applause, wore a sweater from the well-known neo-Nazi martial arts event “Battle of the Nibelungs” at the citizens’ meeting.
He has taken part in marches by the right-wing extremist scene several times in the past. Contrasts There is a photo that shows M. at a demonstration in 2019 with a banner from the “The Right” party. It says “Freedom for Ursula Haverbeck” – a convicted Holocaust denier.
M. lives 15 minutes by car from Warngau. On Contrasts-Inquiry he writes: “I will not comment on my past here because it has nothing to do with the topic of the citizens’ meeting.”
AfD member of the state parliament Andreas Winhart also sat in the middle of the audience. He came especially from Bad Aibling. Winhart caused a scandal in 2018 when he warned about the spread of diseases by refugees. Winhart says today that he would no longer comment like that. He posted a selfie with party friends on X from the citizens’ meeting in Warngau. The whole thing was under the heading: “AfD is working.”
District administrator speaks of an emergency solution
But regardless of the instrumentalization by right-wingers: District Administrator von Löwis admits that it is “not ideal” to build a container village for 500 refugees in the small Warngau. It is a temporary emergency solution. The refugees are currently housed in three gyms in the district.
The conditions there are miserable and the halls are urgently needed for sports. The area in Warngau is the only suitable one he has access to at the moment, says von Löwis.
Many people in town are now worried about what will happen to them. “As a mother, you are afraid,” says stationer Cornelia Kranz. The district administrator has announced that 80 percent of the refugees who will come are men.
Kranz has a 14-year-old daughter. “I no longer want her to wait alone at the train station in the evening for the train,” says Kranz. With 500 refugees, the small Warngau is simply overwhelmed.
Meeting of the “Warngau is human” initiative – making the “best of the situation”.
Worry about expensive cars
Sports car dealer Peter Oblak, who has his business within sight of the planned accommodation, takes a similar view. He is also worried about damage to his expensive cars, including many of the Porsche brand: “You don’t want to accuse anyone of anything, but who is liable here?”
Even those who want to work for the refugees view the plans critically. “I think there is hardly anyone in the village who says: ‘Hurrah, that’s a really great idea to accommodate 500 people at this location,'” says Lena Prieger. After the citizens’ meeting, she and a few others founded the “Warngau is human” initiative. We now have to talk about how we can make the best of the situation without any agitation or aggression.