We are the people

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"We are the people" from the last year of stamps from the GDR (date of issue: February 28, 1990)

“We are the people” is a political slogan that was initially shouted as a speaking choir during the Monday demonstrations in 1989/1990 in the GDR to protest against the GDR government. During the turning point, it was quickly replaced by the slogan “ We are one people ” . Since 2014, the exclamation has been used increasingly in circles around the ethnic , racist , Islamophobic , right-wing populist PEGIDA movement and in demonstrations and actions against asylum seekers and mosques in Germany.

history

Before 1989

“We are the people ” appeared several times in Germany on the occasion of political upheavals , but also gained notoriety abroad.

In German-language literature, Georg Büchner's slogan is used in his revolutionary drama Dantons Tod (published in 1835), where he has a citizen proclaim it after Robespierre states that the will of the people is the law:

“First citizen.
We are the people and we want that there is no law, ergo is
this will the law, ergo in the name of the law there is no law
more, ergo beaten to death! "
Memorial plaque for Ferdinand Freiligrath in Rolandswerth

Then in 1848, during the time of the March Revolution , Ferdinand Freiligrath coined the phrase in his poem Despite everything , in which it says in the seventh and last stanza:

"We are the people, we humanity,
Are forever, in spite of everything! "

During the time of National Socialism , the philosopher Martin Heidegger treated the sentence in 1934 in a lecture on logic. Shortly before, after almost a year of disagreement over university policy, Heidegger had resigned from the position of director of the Freiburg University, which he had taken over at the beginning of the National Socialist regime. Among other things, he said:

"At the moment of this understanding our decision has been made: We are the people."

The saying also plays a certain role in the film Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorsese with Robert De Niro in the title role. On his lonely journeys through New York , he suddenly discovers a luminous figure, the young Betsy, played by Cybill Shepherd , who works in an election office. Here the US presidential candidate advertises with the slogan:

"We are the people."

Monday demonstrations in 1989/1990 in the GDR

Memorial plaque , Alexanderplatz, in Berlin-Mitte

During the Monday demonstrations in 1989/1990 in the GDR , the demonstrators shouted the slogan as a chorus . This most important chorus of the opposition demonstrators was actually proven for the first time on a Monday demonstration in Leipzig on October 2, 1989 opposite a roadblock of heavily armed special forces of the people's police who marched with dog squadrons against the spontaneous demonstration march (by the author Martin Jankowski who was present at the time and who has published in detail). A decisive factor in the creation of the slogan was the continuous description of the demonstrators as "rowdies" in the media, run by the local Leipziger Volkszeitung, a term from the GDR StGB adopted from Stalinism, to which serious acts of violence and the like. a. against security forces, including the VP, were subordinated. The second part of the call arose from the need of the largely peaceful demonstrators to defend themselves against this slanderous accusation: "We are not rowdies - we are the people!"

At the decisive demonstration on October 9, 1989, the variant “ We are one people ” was added to a leaflet in order to involve the security forces and thus urge them to renounce violence. The latter ambiguous wording, but among the demonstrators as opposed to "We are the people" at first not spread, was by the West German media (primarily from the image picked up) and as a requirement for the state union between the GDR and the Federal Republic interpreted . It spread after the Berlin Wall fell. The 2008 film We are the people - love knows no boundaries , also refers to these events .

In 2018 the world criticized the fact that the motto should actually have been: “ We too are the people”, since 1989 was not about denying SED politicians and police officers the ability to be citizens. This criticism is evidently based on a purely völkisch definition of the term and completely misunderstands the contemporary understanding of the contrast between the people and the authorities.

After 1989

At the Monday demonstrations against social cuts in 2004 , the slogan was often tied to, e.g. B. with the transparent label

"We are the people and not the slaves of Hartz IV "

and the newspaper headline

"Down with Hartz IV, we are the people"

The polarization expressed in 2004 with these and similar slogans between just and unjustly treated citizens is said to have the effect of creating identity among protesters. The slogans have been criticized as populist because they presume to assume popular sovereignty in the name of the interests of a sub-group and would also cast doubt on the legitimacy of the properly elected federal government .

In 2014 the symposium "We are the people!" At the University of Graphic Arts and Book Art Leipzig continued with the historical dimension of the slogan for the Peaceful Revolution 1989 and the current right-wing populist use of the slogan, for example, against the building of a mosque in Leipzig-Gohlis and against the accommodation of asylum seekers in Schneeberg apart. The symposium took place as part of the 2014 Leipzig Festival of Lights.

The right-wing populist protest movement PEGIDA , founded by Lutz Bachmann on October 11, 2014, uses the slogan “We are the people” in their demonstrations. The slogan was also chanted, alongside xenophobic slogans such as “Foreigners out!”, During actions against refugees and their admission. B. in February 2016 in Clausnitz . At the demonstrations in Chemnitz in 2018 , the sentence was called in the speaking choir.

In January 2015 Dirk Kurbjuweit ruled : The sentence “We are the people” was “only good for a revolution against an authoritarian state like the GDR, where the rule of a party was disguised with terms like Volkskammer or Volkspolizei. In a democracy it is pointless because the people cannot exist as a unit if everyone has the freedom to express their own opinion. "

The suggestion that the demonstrators close to Pegida stand for the majority of the people (“people's rule” as a translation of the Greek term “democracy” is now usually interpreted as “rule of the majority in the state people ”) was raised by a counter-demonstration in Chemnitz under the Motto: “ We are more ” questioned, which was conceived as a free concert.

Satirical adaptation

Poster of the party The party on a NoFragida demo (2015)

On the occasion of the ethnic and xenophobic context in which the exclamation was increasingly used from around 2014, satirical magazine Titanic and the party associated with it, The Party , satirized the slogan. At demonstrations against right-wing populists, posters and flyers, one announced in modified form: “The people are confused!”. The Cottbus artist Michael Auth titled a group of pictures with the same slogan.

literature

  • Eberhard Holtmann, Adrienne Krappidel, Sebastian Rehse: The drug populism. On the criticism of political prejudice . VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-531-15038-3 .
  • Tobias Hollitzer, Reinhard Bohse (Ed.): Ten years ago today - Leipzig on the way to a peaceful revolution. Innovatio, Bonn / Dover / Friborg / Leipzig / New York, NY / Ostrava 2000, ISBN 3-906501-42-6 (on behalf of the Citizens Committee Leipzig eV for the dissolution of the former State Security MfS).
  • Martin Jankowski : Rabet - Or the disappearance of a direction . via verbis, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-933902-03-7 .
  • Martin Jankowski: The day that changed Germany - October 9, 1989. (= series of publications by the Saxon State Commissioner for the Stasi documents. Volume 7). Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-374-02506-0 .

Movies

Web links

Commons : We are the people  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg Büchner: Danton's death. First act, second scene. In: Karl Pörnbacher, Gerhard Schaub, Hans-Joachim Simm, Edda Ziegler (eds.): Works and letters. Munich edition. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1988, p. 75.
  2. ↑ Martin Heidegger, Helene Weiss: Lógica: lecciones de M. Heidegger (semestre verano 1934) en el legado de Helene Weiss. translated and edited by Víctor Farías . (= Volume 12 of Textos y). Anthropos Editorial, 1991, ISBN 84-7658-305-2 , p. XXII. (Spanish German)
  3. ↑ See Tobias Hollitzer, Reinhard Bohse (Ed.): Ten years ago today - Leipzig on the way to a peaceful revolution. Innovatio Verlag, Friborg 2000, pp. 429-450; Martin Jankowski: Rabet - Or the disappearance of a direction. via verbis Verlag, Munich 1999, p. 159 ff .; Martin Jankowski: The day that changed Germany - October 9, 1989. (= Series of publications by the Saxon State Commissioner for the Stasi documents. No. 7). Leipzig 2007, p. 63 ff.
  4. ↑ Vanessa Fischer: "We are one people" - The story of a German reputation. Country report, Deutschlandradio , 2005.
  5. ↑ Michael Pilz: “We”, says Casper, “are writing history today” . welt.de . 4th September 2018
  6. ↑ Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . August 31, 2004, quoted from E. Holtmann, A. Krappidel, S. Rehse: Die Droge Populismus , 2006, p. 57.
  7. ↑ E. Holtmann, A. Krappidel, S. Rehse: The drug populism. 2006, p. 57.
  8. ↑ PDF Symposium. We are the people. Retrieved January 28, 2015.
  9. ↑ Die Schande von Clausnitz , tagesspiegel.de, accessed on February 20, 2016.
  10. ↑ Xenophobic mob in Saxony scares refugees. In: welt.de . February 19, 2016, accessed February 21, 2016 .
  11. ↑ https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/sachsen-demonstranten-marschieren-nach-messerstecherei-durch-chemnitz/22955724.html
  12. ↑ Dirk Kurbjuweit: Freedom? In: Der Spiegel (print edition). Edition 4/2015. January 17, 2015. P. 94 f. ( online )
  13. ↑ Even the Jena police smile: "The Party" with subtle joke potential at a demo against AfD , thueringer-allgemeine.de, February 18, 2016.
  14. ↑ Klaus Grunewald: Little protest, many questions. In: weser-kurier.de. January 23, 2016, accessed February 21, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Ulrike Elsner: Cottbus: Pictures from the world full of humor and lightness. In: lr-online.de. January 30, 2015, accessed February 21, 2016 .