Berlin deployed some 3,000 police officers to oversee Saturday’s protest demonstration against Covid-19 restrictions, but it fell to just three officers to defend the Reichstag from an angry mob.
On Monday they were invited to Bellevue Palace where Germany’s president Frank-Walter Steinmeier thanked them personally for their stand-off with neo-Nazis – images of which flashed around the world.
Speaking for many traumatised Germans, Mr Steinmeier said the symbolism of the thwarted attack on the iconic building should not be underestimated.
“Anyone who saw the disturbing images of Saturday would have feared even worse, and we have you to thank that the violence was not tolerated,” said Mr Steinmeier. The German head of state said his tolerance for anti-Covid gatherings, and their right of assembly, “ends when demonstrators allow themselves be taken in by enemies of democracy and political rabble-rousers”.
On Saturday in Berlin, about 40,000 people attended a protest against pandemic restrictions they perceive as overblown, or even part of a far-reaching conspiracy to impose a new world order.
As that largely peaceful demonstration wound down at about 8pm, a spontaneous demonstration was taking place nearby on the lawn of the Reichstag, home to Germany’s Bundestag federal parliament.
Redeployed
Shortly before 8pm officers were redeployed from the Reichstag steps to keep control over the demonstration.
At that moment a video shows a middle-aged woman, identified as an esoteric healer with far-right views, took to an improvised stage and addressed the gathered 400 people via a bullhorn.
“Look around you . . . there are no police in front of this building,” she said. “We have to prove that we are all here and we’ll go up there and take back our house, here and now.”
To cheers, the crowd pushed aside metal barriers and surged up the Reichstag steps. There they were faced down by the three officers, who blocked their access to the locked glass doors behind. Protesters spent minutes cheering from their vantage point, waving historically charged Reichsflags last used officially in the Third Reich era.
Seeing the commotion, another group of police officers raced up the steps and pushed back protesters using truncheons and pepper spray.
Police say many of the mob were far-right extremists, others were members of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), while still others were visitors from Poland and the Netherlands.
‘Shameful’
Berlin’s state interior minister Andreas Geisel, whose ban on Saturday’s gathering was overturned by the courts, said such scenes were “shameful” and must never be repeated.
“At no point was the Reichstag unprotected,” he insisted on Monday, vowing to increase security measures and investigate the fateful redeployment. “It was a moment of one, two minutes.”
Besides the Reichstag incident, police revealed on Monday just how close Saturday’s demonstration came to disaster. As well as rampaging neo-Nazis, they detained a man in the main demonstration who was carrying a gun. In total, police made 316 arrests with 131 facing charges; some 33 officers were injured.
Via her spokesman, chancellor Angela Merkel insisted the “vast majority” of Germans think and act differently than those demonstrating in Berlin.
