According to the organizers, an estimated 1.4 million people demonstrated in Germany from Friday to Sunday against the right-wing extremist party Alternative for Germany (AfD).
From Friday to the weekend there were demonstrations in around 100 locations across Germany. On Sunday, rallies took place in major cities such as Cologne, Munich and Berlin. Several other German cities, including Cottbus, Dresden and Chemnitz in the east, also planned demonstrations.
According to the police, around 100,000 people gathered in front of the Bundestag in Berlin.
The Berlin protest was centered around the Reichstag building on Sunday. Image: Thomas Imo/photothek/picture Alliance
According to the Munich police, around 80,000 people took part in the march; organizers estimated the number at 200,000. The march had to be canceled due to overcrowding and participants were asked to disperse.
In Cologne, police figures currently put the number of demonstrators at around 10,000.
Mass protests against right-wing extremists continue in Germany
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Huge demonstrations all over Germany
According to ARD estimates, around 250,000 demonstrators gathered in cities nationwide on Saturday with signs like “Nazis out.”
About 35,000 people gathered in Frankfurt on Saturday for a march in defense of democracy. Protesters filled the central square where organizers planned to hold the rally, as well as a second nearby square and the streets in between. Police said the demonstration was peaceful.
Tens of thousands demonstrate against the right-wing extremists in Germany
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On Friday, a large rally in Hamburg had to be stopped early because far more people came than expected. According to police, 50,000 people were present, the largest protest of its kind to date. Organizers put the figure at 80,000, pointing out that the rally ended before many people could reach it.
Police estimated crowds at other protests at 12,000 in Kassel, 7,000 each in Dortmund and Wuppertal, 20,000 in Karlsruhe, at least 10,000 in Nuremberg, around 16,000 in Halle/Saale, 5,000 in Koblenz and several thousand in Erfurt.
Why are so many people protesting now?
The wave of mobilization against the far-right party was sparked by a Jan. 10 report by investigative magazine Correctiv that revealed AfD members met with extremists in Potsdam in November to discuss the expulsion of immigrants and “unassimilated citizens.” . Members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the largest opposition party, were also reportedly present.
Participants at the meeting discussed “remigration,” a term often used in far-right circles as a euphemism for the expulsion of immigrants and minorities.
The crowd in Munich was so large that the organizers had to break up the protest for security reasonsImage: Sven Hoppe/dpa/picture Alliance
News of the meeting shocked many in Germany at a time when the AfD is running high in opinion polls ahead of three major regional elections in eastern Germany, where the party's support is strongest. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who attended a demonstration last weekend, said any plan to expel immigrants or citizens represented “an attack on our democracy and therefore on all of us.”
The AfD confirmed the presence of its members at the meeting, but insisted that its return migration proposals, which were part of its last election manifesto, do not include naturalized German citizens. These comments at the meeting were made by a far-right Austrian politician, Martin Sellner, who is not a member of the AfD.
dh/rc (AFP, dpa)
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