As in other cities in Saxony-Anhalt, some residents have taken to the streets in Halberstadt in recent weeks. On Monday of last week there were around 1000 people who demonstrated loudly and sometimes aggressively against the corona measures and above all against a possible vaccination requirement. “As citizens of this city, we will not allow ourselves to be divided,” said Mayor Daniel Szarata to the 40,000 inhabitants at the beginning of December. “Only together can we survive this pandemic.” But it didn’t help. The place in the foothills of the Harz Mountains made completely different headlines a year ago.
“Start this Saturday”, it was said, for example, in the Northwest Newspaper. Halberstadt had started vaccinating its citizens against Corona on Boxing Day 2020, one day before the official start of the Germany-wide campaign. The vaccine had arrived there earlier than planned. “We don’t want to waste this one day that the vaccine then loses its shelf life,” said Karsten Fischer from the pandemic staff in the Harz district at the time. “We want to bring it out right away.”
The 101-year-old Edith Kwoizalla achieved a certain fame: as the first person officially vaccinated against Corona in Germany. She is said to have said “Donnerwetter” when she discovered her photo in the local newspaper the next day. To this day, Kwoizalla lives in the senior citizens’ home in Halberstadt that received the first batches of the vaccine. On Saturday a year ago, 40 of the 59 residents received their injections. “Thanks to the early vaccination of the residents, we were saved from outbreaks in the Halberstadt facility,” says Tobias Krüger, the director of the retirement home.
The “vaccination queen”, as her family calls Edith Kwoizalla, received her second and now her third vaccination shortly afterwards. Kwoizalla had worked as a nurse in GDR times, vaccinations against polio, smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus or tuberculosis were a matter of course there. In May she celebrated her 102nd birthday. The family also made the day public because the Corona opponent had been alleged in some Internet forums that Kwoizalla had since died as a result of the vaccination.
In the same month, Halberstadt finally declared the early start of vaccination to be a historic event: On May 7th, the Ameos-Klinikum handed over the first, now empty ampoules of the vaccine to the municipal collection. They are exhibited there in the museum’s antique pharmacy.
The fact that the city has a heritage to preserve is now also shown in a completely different way. In mid-December, the initiative “Together for a colorful Harz” from Halberstadt started a petition. It is aimed at fellow citizens, the district administrator and the mayor and demands “that the Harz region remains a tolerant and colorful region”. “All the work that goes with it is currently being destroyed by tolerating this conspiratorial ideology and right-wing extremist protest movement.” More than 1500 people have signed up to date.