Several thousand people gathered for actions and demonstrations in Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt on the Day of German Unity. According to initial police information, around 10,000 people took to the streets in Gera alone on Monday. Participants also protested loudly in other cities with whistles and drums against the current policy of the federal government, inflation and the war in Ukraine. An end to the sanctions against Russia was also called for.
In the evening a protest march passed through Gera. Björn Höcke, party and faction leader of the AfD in Thuringia, took part. The AfD is observed in Thuringia by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. According to the police, around 370 people had gathered earlier that afternoon in Gera on the Theaterplatz under the motto “Destroy the right-wing unit”.
As the Jena State Police Inspectorate announced in the evening, there were also around 4,200 people in Thuringia in Weimar, the Weimarer Land district and the Saale-Holzland district on the street. According to the Gera State Police Inspectorate, around 3,800 people also came to an unannounced meeting in the eastern Thuringian city of Altenburg.
In Saxony-Anhalt, hundreds of people came together for actions on German Unity Day. In Magdeburg, for example, the police counted around 2,700 participants. There was also a protest march in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, as a police spokesman said.
Hundreds of people also gathered in Saxony for several actions, such as in Zwickau, Crimmitschau and Plauen. In Leipzig, the police spoke of a number of participants in the “mid four-digit range”. There were also several sit-ins in the city, as a police spokeswoman said. A total of around 1,000 police officers were deployed there, according to a statement in the evening.
In connection with the meeting in Leipzig, the police also initiated several investigations, including for resistance against law enforcement officers, insult, breach of the peace and for various violations of the Assembly Act and the ban on face masks. According to the police, two meetings in Dresden, including the AfD, were trouble-free.
