On the Scene

Berlin

‘PEACE!!!” a leather-clad youth, his face contorted with anger, screamed three inches from a policeman’s nose. We were a stone’s throw away from the neo-classical Neue Wache, Berlin’s equivalent of the tomb of the unknown soldier. (In fact, we were just outside stone-throwing range: in anticipation of a riot, closer access had been forbidden by Germany’s Constitutional Court the day before.) Official Berlin was preparing to receive several dozen heads of state at the Schauspielhaus to commemorate the end of the Second World War. The Neue Wache was the site of the alternative commemoration. The two-thousand-strong rally gathered the full range of Berlin’s leftists: from the neatly dressed, goofy Greens, to the riot-prone “autonomes,” Germany’s ultra-anarchists. The youth I was observing was one of the radicals. Suddenly, he raised his fist and punched the policeman in the face. The policeman punched him back. At this, several bystanders lunged at the officer, yelling slogans against police violence. For the first time in my life I found myself on the side of a German in uniform.

RS

About the Author

Radek Sikorski

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Berlin

‘PEACE!!!” a leather-clad youth, his face contorted with anger, screamed three inches from a policeman’s nose. We were a stone’s throw away from the neo-classical Neue Wache, Berlin’s equivalent of the tomb of the unknown soldier. (In fact, we were just outside stone-throwing range: in anticipation of a riot, closer access had been forbidden by Germany’s Constitutional Court the day before.) Official Berlin was preparing to receive several dozen heads of state at the Schauspielhaus to commemorate the end of the Second World War. The Neue Wache was the site of the alternative commemoration. The two-thousand-strong rally gathered the full range of Berlin’s leftists: from the neatly dressed, goofy Greens, to the riot-prone “autonomes,” Germany’s ultra-anarchists. The youth I was observing was one of the radicals. Suddenly, he raised his fist and punched the policeman in the face. The policeman punched him back. At this, several bystanders lunged at the officer, yelling slogans against police violence. For the first time in my life I found myself on the side of a German in uniform.