Monday Protests in Germany
indymedia Germany | protest reports | labournet Germany
The protests started several Mondays ago in Magdeburg, Eastern Germany, when a short-noticed protest against huge cutbacks in the social welfare system mobilised an unexpected 10.000 people. Suddenly, large-scale protests rocked the streets of several cities in Eastern Germany in the midst of Summer and have spread to many cities in Western Germany as well.
The tradition of Monday protests goes back to 1989, when mass protests were held every Monday in Leipzig, East Germany, and hundreds of thousands called for regime change, eventually toppling the government.
The new laws called Hartz IV being introduced in Germany are part of a package of neo-liberal cuts to the social system (the controversial Agenda 2010) that have already been decided in parliament under the Social Democrat and Green administration and are scheduled for January 1, 2005. The incredible overhaul of the welfare system is the biggest attack on social benefits in the post-war history of Germany and reduces unemployment payments to the level of welfare benefits (Arbeitslosengeld II ). The plan is considered to mean impoverishment of a large number of long-term unemployed, especially in Eastern Germany, where unemployment rates remain high at 18 to 20 percent, more than double the figure in the Western states. Nobody believes the laws will create new jobs but they will introduce forced labour at 1 Euro an hour, plunging thousands of people into poverty, especially in Eastern Germany which was de-industrialised at a large scale after the so-called reunification in 1990.
indymedia reports about the growing protest (in german)
approximate number of protesters in each town
[fr]: Nouvelles manifestations du lundi en Allemagne
Paris: 6 septembre 2004, 17h00: metro stalingrad devant la rotonde - Actions contre la precarite
belgrade indymedia on Hartz IV
The tradition of Monday protests goes back to 1989, when mass protests were held every Monday in Leipzig, East Germany, and hundreds of thousands called for regime change, eventually toppling the government.
The new laws called Hartz IV being introduced in Germany are part of a package of neo-liberal cuts to the social system (the controversial Agenda 2010) that have already been decided in parliament under the Social Democrat and Green administration and are scheduled for January 1, 2005. The incredible overhaul of the welfare system is the biggest attack on social benefits in the post-war history of Germany and reduces unemployment payments to the level of welfare benefits (Arbeitslosengeld II ). The plan is considered to mean impoverishment of a large number of long-term unemployed, especially in Eastern Germany, where unemployment rates remain high at 18 to 20 percent, more than double the figure in the Western states. Nobody believes the laws will create new jobs but they will introduce forced labour at 1 Euro an hour, plunging thousands of people into poverty, especially in Eastern Germany which was de-industrialised at a large scale after the so-called reunification in 1990.
indymedia reports about the growing protest (in german)
approximate number of protesters in each town
[fr]: Nouvelles manifestations du lundi en Allemagne
Paris: 6 septembre 2004, 17h00: metro stalingrad devant la rotonde - Actions contre la precarite
belgrade indymedia on Hartz IV
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Revival of Monday Protests in Germany (by zapatist, 18.08.2004):
Protesten in Duitsland:
junge Welt on last week's Monday protests
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Two additional figures - Germany 2003 :
+ 11% increase of top managers' salaries
+ 30% increase of corporates profits
]
60,000 hear & cheer Oskar Lafontaine in Leipzig
Twice again, 120-180,000 took to the streets in now more than 200 cities in East- and West Germany on each of the last two Monday demonstrations of August. In Leipzig alone 60,000 rallied – according to the organisers – to hear and cheer Oskar Lafontaine attacking the Hartz IV stage of Schroeder’s Agenda 2010, a massive program to blow up the social welfare state. Schroeder is chancellor of the Social democrats-Greens coalition, Dr Hartz is government-advising top manager of Schroeder’s beloved car manufacturing heavyweight VW, and Lafontaine is not only a staunch and the most prominent critic of the US-style dismantling of workers rights but also the former SPD boss and Schroeder rival, before the latter became chancellor in 1998.
Lafontaine is no populist: already in 1989/90, he was the only prominent politician who warned of the destructive German nationalism and analysed that the “Ko(h)lonialism” against the former GDR, it’s take over by West-German big business, doesn’t deserve the label “reunification”. He pleaded for a staged unification with several referenda, and subordinated to European unity. He had the majority in the west, which feared the gigantic costs, but East Germans voted for Kohl’s hollow promise of “b(l)ooming landscapes”. Now, the Monday demonstrators of 1989 are the Hartz victims of 2005, and now, they wanted to listen to the truths they once tried to escape. Green Left Weekly documents a first-hand report of the August 30 “Montagsdemo” in Leipzig by Till Meyer, published (on September 1) in radical-left daily junge Welt (jW), one of the two daily newspapers of pre-1990 East-Germany (freely translated by Norman Brewer):
Already an hour before the rally starts, the square and streets around famous Nikolai church are filled with people. “Today we will probably be as many as in 1989” says a marshal from the united services union ver.di to jW. The lead banner reads “Action alliance Social Justice. Stop the cutbacks”, next to it logos of the Montagsdemonstrationen organisers: ver.di, Neues (New) Forum (a 1989 legend), an Initiative against a renewed Reichs-corvee (a reference to methods of the Nazis), and the Syndicate of the Unemployed in Germany.
Different from Monday demonstrations in Berlin, you can see only few union banners apart from ver.di’s. Many protesters hold up creative, self-made placards: “We demand the resignation of the Schroeder government because of deceiving voters and harming the constitution” or “We are the populisticly incited citizens” and “Schroeder into production – but for cheap wages” (which rhymes in German).
But everyone is waiting for Oskar. About 30 TV teams from all over Europe get ready to catch on camera the former SPD chairman. They succeed at point 6 pm. Camera crews run. And there he comes, surrounded by a throng of media delegates and marshals. Lafontaine laughs and waves in all directions as all of a sudden a sole egg is flying. It dies at some TV pack’s microphone. A young bald man with fine twine runs off, but then gets caught and, together with his 2 mates, gets hauled off. “That must be neo-nazis, masqueraded to keep a low profile“, says a marshal. Lafontaine hasn’t noticed this incident.
People greet him with “Bravo”s and prolonged applause. Only few booed. A man screams at him hysterically: “Mr Lafontaine, you abuse the Montagsdemo”. The addressed smiles dismissively. Then the march starts. After the egg-throwing, police have deployed an officer chain at the front. With chants (that rhyme in German) like “Schroeder has got to go – Hartz is crud” or “Join us – or it’s your turn tomorrow” the long march winds through the narrow streets of Leipzig’s inner city.
Then there’s an incident in the mall which shows the “well-balanced” reporting of German bourgeois media: an RTL TV crew which mingles with the demonstrators, directs camera and microphone at a obviously drunk man: “What do you think about Oskar Lafontaine’s presence?” ask the reporter and straight away gets surrounded by outraged protestors. “This is egregious what you are doing here” shouts a well-clad middle-aged man: “You interview those people just to defame us. That’s what you always do.” Turmoil erupts: “Get lost, you only want to malign us”, it shouts many-voiced, so the RTL team flees quickly.
“The people, who take on the streets here”, the agitated man says to jW, “are neither loiterers nor afraid of hard work. They just have no job and then they get the shits from all the media on top. This is swinishness.” Indeed.
“I am unemployed for 3 years” says a 44 year old skilled construction worker to jW. “The money won’t last at all, and with Hartz IV my family will go down the drain. Anything Berlin tells us, creating jobs and such, is nothing but blank demagogy. There is no work.”
When Lafontaine and the other speakers show up on the stage, thunderous applause erupts and the famous chant “We are the people” repeats over and over again. The ver.di marshal comments: “I’ve been here already in 1989. When this square was full, it were 100,000 people. Today it should be 60,000.” This is also what the organisers announce later.
A hairdresser in her late 40s gets on the microphone: “I welcome the populist-incited protesters.” And then she presents a calculation: She gets 400 Euros (about A$700) per month for a ¾ job. She only manages to survive with her husband’s additional wage. ”This is modern slave labour for a starvation wage.” In 1989 they wanted change, but instead of the dictatorship of the politbuero they got the dictatorship of big money. And: “We citizens of the GDR did not come as beggars into the FRG (West-Germany), but now we are. [..] An employer now can pay up to 30 per cent under union agreement. [..] I will have to work for 3.07 Euro (~A$5.30) per hour.” Her finish “Millions are stronger than Millionaires” drowns in thunderous “We are the people” chants.
Finally, being in good humour, a rhetorically brilliant Oskar Lafontaine speaks. He starkly attacks te Schroeder government and gets interrupted by spontaneous applause and chants again and again. For the opponents of Hartz IV, Lafontaine’s appearance is obviously a gain. He has given them courage. “I want him to come back next week” a protestor said to her neighbour. And it will go on, the organisers promise. “As Hartz IV has got to go.“
Lafontaines speech can be read at
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GERMANY: Monday demonstrations continue to grow
Norman Brewer, Berlin
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