Opera ball demo
As Opera Ball demo (rare anti-Opera Ball demo ) are demonstrations called getting the better of the Vienna Opera Ball taught, but also against similar events in other cities. As part of these demonstrations, street battles between the police and opponents of the opera ball continued.
The beginnings
The first opera ball demo took place in 1987 in protest against the planned Wackersdorf reprocessing plant for nuclear fuels in Wackersdorf , Bavaria . It was directed against the visit of the Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss , who had been announced as a guest at the Vienna Opera Ball.
The Green Alternative Vienna registered a rally in front of the opera for February 26, 1987. When the police wanted to remove a fence from Wackersdorf, which a Salzburg citizens' initiative had erected as a symbolic protest against Franz Josef Strauss , the situation escalated. At around 10 p.m., the police began using batons and tried to break up the demonstration, which consisted of around 500 people. From that point on, the demonstrators actively resisted. The next day, the Austrian press reported in detail about the riots.
The following year, an “Anti-Opera Ball” personal committee attempted to register a demonstration for February 11, 1988, the day of the Opera Ball. After the media reported on possible riots in advance, the police prohibited the announced rally. On the afternoon of February 11, activists stretched a chain across Vienna's Ringstrasse , blocking inner-city traffic to protest the police banning the rally. Despite the ban on demonstrations, over 3,000 people gathered in downtown Vienna in the evening to demonstrate against the Opera Ball. The demonstration was peaceful until after 10 p.m. Then a police car drove into a group of people for reasons that were not yet clear. A woman was injured under the car.
After Aegidigasse was cleared
The evacuation of an occupied house in Aegidigasse led to an increase in militancy during the opera ball demonstrations in 1989 and 1990, both from the police and from autonomous activists.
On February 2, 1989, another opera ball demo with several thousand participants took place. This time the motto was "Eat the rich!". This year, too, the demonstration was violently broken up by the police. In the course of the event, demonstrators hijacked the Mercedes of a person who went to the opera ball and pushed him several times into stepping grids, behind which the police were located. The police used batons and a water cannon. 60 participants had to be taken to hospital injured, several police officers were also injured again. Several people were arrested and police were charged with ill-treatment during and after arrests. The driver of a truck accompanying the demonstration was arrested by the police and had to spend several weeks in custody. There were some convictions of demonstrators for resisting state authority. The increased violence of the demonstrators made the police react accordingly. Greens, Autonomous, etc. often complained about the “disproportionate police violence” against demonstrators - but shortly before they were arrested they smashed windows, threw paving stones, set dumpsters on fire or hit police officers with iron bars. In public, “The Greens” were criticized as “a democratic party that sympathizes with the perpetrators and defends them” or “discredits Austria's security system with unconfirmed allegations”.
1990s
The opera ball demo on February 22, 1990 was attacked several times by hooligans and skinheads with batons, flares and knives. At around 10 p.m., the police tried to break up the demonstration by force, just as they did the year before. As a result, fighting between demonstrators and the police continued for hours. The windows of a supermarket branch were smashed and the store was partly looted. Dozens of people were injured, 30 people were arrested and some were held for longer.
In 1991 the Opera Ball was canceled due to the Gulf War . The counter-demonstration nevertheless took place with around 300 participants. This was questioned by police encircled and searched individually. In the following years demonstrations were repeatedly registered for the day of the Vienna Opera Ball. However, fewer than 200 people took part; in the late 1990s, in some years there were no more rallies at all.
Protest movement after 2000
Only in 2000, after the swearing-in of of ÖVP and FPÖ existing federal government a large protest movement, the Opera Ball demo was reactivated under which arose. The 2000 Opera Ball demo overlapped with the Thursday demonstration against the black-blue government that took place on the same day . Between 12,000 and 15,000 people took part. Around 10 p.m., actor Hubsi Kramar, dressed as Adolf Hitler in a Nazi uniform and mustache, was chauffeured to the State Opera in a limousine, got out and entered the opera house. He was arrested on the stairs to the auditorium, shortly afterwards also his chauffeur, who was also an actor. After the demonstration, there were isolated clashes with police forces.
The 2001 Opera Ball demonstration was reminiscent of the 1980s, both in terms of the number of participants and the actions of the demonstrators and the police. This time, before 10 p.m., a baton was used against the approximately 2000 demonstrators after several riots by violent criminals. More than 40 people were arrested. In the early hours of the morning, the Ernst-Kirchweger-Haus in Vienna-Favoriten was stormed by the police and searched for weapons. The doors of the TATblatt editorial office located in the Ernst-Kirchweger-Haus were also broken into, and several editorial computers were allegedly destroyed. In addition, masked demonstrators destroyed shop windows in Kärntner Strasse .
The opera ball demo in the following year was comparatively calm. After the escalation in the previous year, a camera team from the Wiener Grünen accompanied the demo to document possible police attacks on video.
The opera ball demos in 2003 and 2004 were directed not only against the protest against the black-blue government, but above all against the Iraq war . In 2010 there was no demonstration against the Opera Ball. There are no known demonstrations worth mentioning in the following years from 2011 to 2014. In 2011 only six people demonstrated, in 2016 there were nine people from the Communist Youth of Austria (KJÖ) .
Larger opera ball demos have been taking place again since 2017. These demos were organized by the KJÖ. In 2019, for the first time, no opera ball demo was registered.
Since 2008, the protest has increasingly shifted to the Vienna Academic Ball, known as the WKR Ball until 2012 .
literature
- Robert Foltin : And we are still moving - social movements in Austria . Edition Grundrisse, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-9501925-0-6 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Robert Foltin: And we are still moving - social movements in Austria , 2004, page 174 ( ISBN 3-9501925-0-6 )
- ↑ Foltin 2004, page 175
- ↑ Foltin 2004, page 176
- ↑ A British feature film of the time: Eat the Rich
- ↑ a b Foltin 2004, page 182
- ^ No demo against the Opera Ball , ORF .at from February 9, 2010
- ↑ Minidemo frightens visitors to the opera ball , ORF .at from February 5, 2016
- ↑ https://amp.diepresse.com/5366420
- ↑ http://www.vienna.at/eat-the-rich-opernballdemo-2017-angekuendigt/5013441/amp
- ^ Salzburg24: No opera ball demo registered ; accessed on Feb. 27, 2019
- ^ Celebration of the right-wing populist FPÖ: Opponents of the academics ball riot in Vienna. In: Spiegel Online . January 24, 2014.