The police have secured a concert by singer Sebastian Krumbiegel in Schleusingen, Thuringia – the Prinzen frontman wanted to use his performance to send a signal against right-wing extremism.
Parallel to his concert on Saturday evening, a procession by the right-wing voter group “Zukunft Hildburghausen” took place. According to police, around 95 people took part in the right-wing extremist march, and around 240 participants came to Krumbiegel’s concert and a subsequent silent protest in front of the venue, a church. According to police, everything remained peaceful.
Krumbiegel doesn’t want to be intimidated
Only this week it became known that Krumbiegel had been seriously threatened before his reading the previous evening in Greifswald in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. After nasty comments on social media, the organizers wanted to cancel the reading on Friday evening for fear of attacks.
However, he resisted this, said Krumbiegel, who comes from Leipzig. He doesn’t want to let “some mob” dictate when and where he performs. “It was important for me not to let myself be driven away.” The reading in Greifwald finally took place on Friday evening under police protection, around 80 people came, there were no incidents.
Krumbiegel said he had repeatedly received threats in the past. “Now the debate was about whether the event had to be canceled. That’s a whole new dimension.”
Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth said in Berlin that it was alarming and should not be accepted that a committed artist like Krumbiegel should be prevented from performing with threats and intimidation and that the organizers were therefore very worried. Roth: “It must not happen in our country that right-wing extremist forces want to determine where which form of culture takes place.”
