Promise ceremony in Bremen 1980

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Weser Stadium in the Pauliner Marsch , between Weser (left) and Osterdeich (center), adjacent to the development of the eastern suburb (2005)

The solemn pledge of military recruits on May 6, 1980 in Bremen's Weser Stadium was the first pledge ceremony since the existence of the Bundeswehr that was carried out as a major public event outside a barracks . The protests of various groups developed into violent riots, which culminated in the largest street battle in the history of Bremen .

planning

1980 marked the 25th anniversary of the Bundeswehr and the Federal Republic's membership in NATO . On the occasion of this anniversary, for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, a number of public sworn recruits were scheduled. As a prelude, 1,200 Bundeswehr recruits were to be  sworn in publicly in Bremen's Weser Stadium on the evening of May 6, 1980 , the 25th anniversary of the Federal Republic's accession to NATO . Further swearing-in were scheduled among others on September 11, 1980 in the Jahn Stadium in Kamen , on November 6, 1980 on the Königsplatz in Munich and on November 11, 1980 in the Lower Saxony Stadium in Hanover. For the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Bundeswehr, November 12, 1980, a public vow was finally planned on the Münsterplatz in what was then the federal capital of Bonn .

Mayor Hans Koschnick
(before 1985)
Defense Minister Hans Apel (1978)

According to reports by Spiegel , the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr and the commanders of the armed forces are said to have campaigned in March 1980 to celebrate the anniversary with a military field parade with tanks and artillery marching past and combat squadrons flying over. However, Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) and Defense Minister Hans Apel (SPD) rejected this. Instead, celebrations of vows should be held with a large tattoo . The Free Hanseatic City of Bremen was selected for the opening event because 25 years earlier, in 1955, the first public vow in the history of the Bundeswehr had taken place there. Bremen's mayor, Hans Koschnick (SPD), complied with Apel's request and agreed. As a justification, he stated that the "Bundeswehr [...] ultimately does not need to hide from society".

At the same time, the peace movement in the Federal Republic of Germany has been strengthening since 1979, particularly in the wake of the protests against NATO's double resolution , the announced retrofitting of medium-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe . According to Spiegel , the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the Military Counter-Intelligence Service (MAD) and the then General Inspector of the Bundeswehr, Jürgen Brandt, warned of possible militant riots. However, the federal and state governments have insisted on maintaining tradition.

Federal Defense Minister Apel traveled to the ceremony. On the afternoon of May 6, 1980, Mayor Koschnick invited 400 guests from politics and society, as well as high-ranking members of the armed forces from the Bundeswehr and NATO staff, to Bremen's town hall .

Protests and mobilization in advance

Left groups, but also many SPD members in Bremen, were against the mass vow. Various party branches, from the working group for employee issues to the women in the SPD to the Jusos , condemned the planned event. The delegates of the SPD sub-districts Bremen-West and Bremen-Ost protested against “unnecessary saber rattling” and “out of date fuss”. They demanded a swearing-in in a "normal setting", preferably in the barracks yard. The SPD state chairman in Bremen, Konrad Kunick , publicly recommended "to forego outdated traditional military forms".

The regional association of the education and science union (GEW) also called for the protests, while the DGB condemned them and forbade its members to participate. Representatives of Christian churches participated in the preparation and implementation of a demonstration as part of the initiative against the public unification of recruits on May 6th .

The Committee for Peace, Disarmament and Cooperation and the Marxist Group distributed leaflets with calls for protest in Bremen in advance. The Communist League of West Germany (KBW) also called for protests. The KBW was created in 1973 from the Communist League of Bremen and called for the "replacement of the police and the standing army by general armament, based on the municipalities".

A total of three demonstrations were registered: At 4:30 p.m., a demonstration supported by the KBW and the Bremen citizens' initiative against nuclear power plants was to move from the main station to Goetheplatz . From there, at 5.30 p.m., a demonstration march to the Weser Terraces followed, which should then turn into a rally with a cultural program until 11 p.m. This demonstration was registered on May 6th by the initiative against the public association of recruits , which was supported by Jusos, young democrats , youth trade unions, church groups and student representatives from Bremen universities. From 7.30 p.m. the KBW had announced an additional rally at the Osterdeich.

Demonstration and argument

A Bundeswehr VW bus was knocked over during the demonstration.
Osterdeich in front of the Weser Stadium (back right) (2015)
Typical street scene in Bremen's Ostertorviertel ( 2014)
Former interior of the stadium, structurally similar to 1980 (2008)

Around 10,000 demonstrators gathered before the celebration began. The “Initiative” demonstration, with 8,000 participants, initially ran without any particular incident. Then groups of masked and partially helmeted demonstrators broke away from the demonstration and threw paving stones and Molotov cocktails at the police and the soldiers present. Iron bars and other impact devices were also used. Protesters set Bundeswehr vehicles on fire. Estimates of the number of violent demonstrators vary between 300 and 1,000 people. According to the committee of inquiry into the events, "a previously unexperienced militancy and determination of the violent criminals who invaded the law enforcement officers without preparation or banter" and operated from a crowd of 10,000 to 15,000 people were determined.

In the Ostertorviertel a doll representing the Federal President Karl Carstens was burned to loud cheers. Initially, only 100 police officers were deployed at the fence around the stadium, facing several hundred militants. The police called for reinforcements. To storm multiple attempted demonstrators, the stadium, the gates of the police and military police ( "defended Not" the Bundeswehr Der Spiegel ) were. Demonstrators managed to break open the gates twice. However, the police and soldiers were able to push back the invading protesters. According to Spiegel , police helicopters were shot at with tracer ammunition and fireworks rockets. The police radio was interrupted. Four Bundeswehr VW buses heading towards the stadium were stopped by demonstrators; the soldiers fled and a bus went up in flames.

From 6.30 p.m., the entrance to the stadium, which had only recently opened, was blocked by demonstrators. Until after 7 p.m., spectators were let in “through various stadium gates, some of which were fought over between violent criminals and the police”. Federal President Carstens, Defense Minister Apel and Mayor Koschnick were flown into the stadium by helicopter. Large groups of demonstrators who disrupted the vow with noise, whistles and chants were pushed out of the stadium several times.

At one point, peaceful protesters formed a chain between police and militants. They were “sprayed away” by police water cannons with a CS gas admixture . In the late evening, the remaining demonstrators wanted to withdraw. The police, now reinforced with fresh forces from Lower Saxony , blocked side streets "and struck again".

The police then reported 257 injured police officers, three wounded soldiers and at least 50 injured demonstrators. Six Bundeswehr vehicles burned out, police cars and water cannons were damaged. Numerous demonstrators were temporarily arrested, and 42 preliminary proceedings were initiated on suspicion of a serious breach of the peace and assault. The property damage amounted to the equivalent of 500,000 euros.

A VW bus and a pickup truck that had served as a loudspeaker truck for the Communist League of West Germany were confiscated. Batons and hard hats, gas masks and weatherproof clothing, as well as containers with distilled water for washing out tear gas and gasoline cans were found in the vehicles.

The vow itself went largely smoothly within the Weser Stadium. The event began with a speech by the Federal President, followed by the traditional military ceremony of the Great Tattoo and, finally, the vow of the 1200 young recruits.

Reactions

On the morning after the riots, a newscaster from Radio Bremen reported : “During the defense (sic!) Of 1200 Bundeswehr recruits, there were serious riots yesterday evening.” The slip of the tongue was picked up by many commentators, as it reproduced the real story.

Bremen's Senator for the Interior Helmut Fröhlich (SPD) said it was "the worst incidents in Bremen since the end of the war". Helmut Kohl , then CDU chairman, saw the protests as a "scandal that is unique in the history of the Federal Republic". The then Chancellor candidate Franz Josef Strauss said it was a "brutal attack on this society".

SPD parliamentary group leader Herbert Wehner publicly asked "for forgiveness that soldiers and officers of the Bundeswehr have been insulted and harassed by acts that are unworthy of our democratic community".

A public vow of 400 conscripts, originally planned for May 14, 1980 on Rathausplatz in Emden, was relocated to the Karl von Müller barracks in Emden due to the incidents in Bremen for security reasons.

In 2010, Klaus Wolschner pointed out in the taz that although many demonstrators were pacifistically motivated, the organizers of the protests were not. The DKP-oriented "peace groups" would rather have discredited the Bundeswehr in the interests of the GDR , while the Maoist and autonomous groups wanted to weaken NATO with quasi-military means.

Wolschner sums it up: "From a political point of view, the battle was enormously successful: for ten years after that there were no more public swearing-in by the Bundeswehr in the whole of the republic." For Markus Mohr, "protests like this, which largely ran from 1976 until the end of the social-liberal coalition, took place Took place in 1982, for the fact that the traditional order of the Bundeswehr , which has been valid since 1965 , had to be thrown overboard. "

Literary utilization

The Bremen-born writer Sven Regener processed the disputes in his book Neue Vahr Süd . In the film adaptation of the novel of the same name , the "Battle of the Weser Stadium" is recreated.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Bremen: Signals overheard - Der Spiegel 20/1980. Spiegel Online, Hamburg, accessed August 30, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b Karl-Heinz janßen: Does the Bundeswehr need the big tattoo ? In: The time . November 21, 2012, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed August 30, 2017]).
  3. ↑ Karla Müller-Tupath, Hans Koschnik: Overcoming what separates: Biography , forward book 2009, p. 114
  4. ↑ a b c Alexandra Knief: When the Bundeswehr triggered bloody riots in Bremen . ( weser-kurier.de [accessed on August 30, 2017]).
  5. ↑ Stepping out of the front , DER SPIEGEL No. 41 1980, p. 55; can be viewed online
  6. ↑ Grün and Gloria , DER SPIEGEL No 47 1980, pp. 21–24 available online
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Calendar sheet: 6.5.1980: Zoff at the "Big Zapfenstreich" - SPIEGEL ONLINE - one day. Spiegel Online, Hamburg, accessed August 30, 2017 .
  8. ↑ German Bundestag: Report of the Defense Committee as the 2nd Committee of Inquiry under Article 45a, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law on the motion of the members of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group in the Defense Committee to set up the Defense Committee as an investigation committee to investigate the events in connection with the bloody riots on the occasion of the public vow of Bundeswehr soldiers on May 6, 1980 in the Bremen Weser Stadium (PDF). Printed matter 8/4472. September 8, 1980, p. 14
  9. ↑ The last stand . In: The time . November 22, 2012, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed August 30, 2017]).
  10. ↑ German Bundestag: Report of the Defense Committee as the 2nd Committee of Inquiry under Article 45a, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law on the motion of the members of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group in the Defense Committee to set up the Defense Committee as an investigation committee to investigate the events in connection with the bloody riots on the occasion of the public vow of Bundeswehr soldiers on May 6, 1980 in the Bremen Weser Stadium . Printed matter 8/4472. September 8, 1980, p. 17
  11. ^ Bremen, Bundeswehr and Bambule. André Anchuelo. Jungle World . 1998/19
  12. ↑ a b c German Bundestag: Report of the Defense Committee as the 2nd Committee of Inquiry under Article 45a, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law on the motion of the members of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group in the Defense Committee to set up the Defense Committee as a committee of inquiry to investigate the events in connection with the bloody Riots on the occasion of the public vow of Bundeswehr soldiers on May 6, 1980 in Bremen's Weserstadion . Printed matter 8/4472. September 8, 1980, p. 18
  13. ↑ a b c d Klaus Wolschner: Recruit vow: Defeat for the Bundeswehr . In: the daily newspaper . ( taz.de [accessed on August 31, 2017]).
  14. ↑ Do heads roll in Bremen? Apel confirms: The Senate was informed , in Reutlinger General-Anzeiger No. 110 of May 12, 1980, p. 2
  15. ^ Markus Mohr: Disagree . Junge Welt, May 6, 2010, documented on ag-friedensforschung.de