Magdeburgers against the neonazis

I seem to continuously stumble upon festivals and markets and rallys in Germany. I am no longer surprised to see kiosks and booths and tents springing up from nowhere, and mobs of people celebrating one thing or another. However, today's discovery was a little bit of a shock for a naive westerner.

This Saturday Shannon and I decided to visit the historical monastery in Magdeburg, which now houses a modern art museum. On my way to meet her I could not ignore the unusually large number of policemen lining the streets and milling about. As I walked further, I counted dozens of people, mostly young and male, dressed entirely in black. There were also tents everywhere that appeared to be informational mostly, handing out brochures and posters. I passed an Amnesty International booth, and a booth that read (roughly translated) "women's issues."

As if sensing my confusion, my project manager sent me a text message just then asking me if I would like to join her at the anti-neonazi rally downtown. When I called her to tell her I was actually accidentally smack in the middle of the rally already, but had plans with Shannon, she explained that Magdeburg was an annual location for a large neonazi rally. In mid-January 1945 the entire city of Magdeburg was razed to the ground by Allied forces. Though the date is not significant to many Magdeburgers, the neonazis have clung to it as symbolic of their cause. This year the Magdeburgers organized an even bigger ANTI-neonazi event in retaliation on the same day as the neonazi rally. I am still unclear about the identities of the people in black though, since dressing this way is sometimes seen as a method of alligning oneself with the neonazis.

Despite the police officers, police vehicles and eventually riot control squad, the atmosphere of the day was pleasant, and the usual Saturday afternoon shoppers seemed to all be carrying on with their usual business. The monastery was smaller than I expected, and very dull and grey looking from the outside. On the main entrance door handles, an artist had afixed two brass busts, one of a woman and one of a man, cleverly rigged so that when I pushed the man's hat up, the door opened. I imagine this was a later addition and part of the modern art museum's influence, although I enjoyed the mental picture of devout sisters with their pious heads bowed all pushing on the asburd man's hat to enter the convent.

I don't know anything about modern art. The first exhibit we saw seemed to be abstract representations of inards and organs made from terra cotta and clay and bronze. Another even creepier exhibition was of life-sized children wearing real clothes; each child was facing the wall with their hands against it, giving the appearance that all seven of them were under arrest, or perhaps trying desperately to hold up the wall. Even if I didn't understand the art, the setting with its old stone hallways and high ceilings was interesting and I liked to try to read the German explanations on the placards.

Back outside it had gotten colder and the crowds seemed to be moving more quickly and agitated as we made our way back toward the center of town. We saw a man in black with a flag that had an indecipherable symbol on it. Behind him walked a few others dressed in black, and all of them were chanting something I didn't understand. It became clear to us that the anti-neonazi rally was coming to a close, and the neonazi rally itself was just beginning. By six o-clock, when I went out to the front of my building to bring in the mail, I could hear the confident voice of a leader addressing his followers in the distance, but again I could not make out what he was saying.

Different Magdeburgers have different ideas about why these ideas didn't die out after the war and why there has been an insurgence of neonazis recently. The consensus seems to be that those people who are wanting in some way, or maybe wanting in many ways, need to find someone to blame, and that the neonazis are very good at blaming. Though no one here has anything to blame me for, I am staying inside tonight.