Policing the past

History weighs heavy on all our shoulders but that is particularly true of Germany where the past casts a long shadow...

One of the very first impressions Germany made on me occurred at the railway station in Regensburg when I saw a local policeman who was carrying a gun on his hip. The policeman in this photo is in a completely different category however.....

One Saturday in October,1922, Adolf Hitler entered the town of Coburg in Bavaria with some 800 supporters and the weekend was spent holding political speeches and having streetfights with Communist groups. The mob loyal to Hitler won the day and this was their first triumph outside of Munich. Ten years later a National Socialist badge-of-honour was designed to commemorate the success in Coburg. The events in Coburg found their way into Mein Kampf and taught Hitler the value of violence as a useful means towards taking political power.

The photo here was taken this weekend at a demonstration during which roughly 100 young, right-wing supporters paraded though the town centre waving red flags and generally making a nuisance of themselves to 'celebrate' the 90th anniversary of the original event.

The right-wing demonstrators were opposed by about the same number of young protestors shouting "Nazis raus", booing and making sure the visitors felt unwelcome. This second group eventually sat down at a junction and blocked their progress. More significantly , the biggest group of all at the event was the police. They had turned out in such large numbers because, I think, right-wing underground groups have been very much in the news recently...

In these austere times I just don't want to know what the cost of policing the event was....but, of course, policed it must be.

To be fair, the authorities had the situation completely under control and there was little sense of real fear or danger. A cultural festival had also been arranged in opposition to this political demonstration and everything eventually passed off with only 5 arrests.

It will interest me to see how local newspapers cover the event tomorrow.

The presence of right-wing supporters on the streets of this quiet German town, rattling old skeletons as they go, drags up issues, questions and feelings that are difficult to deal with. Apart from the large police presence, the most abiding impression is how young the participants in both groups were.