Outreach and Antifascist Self-Organisation

In the early 1970s, individual pastors in the Protestant churches in the GDR started „Offene Arbeit“ (Open Church) outreach sessions, which became a shelter for youths who did not fit in. The target group included „the conspicuous, the vulnerable, the off-track“ and offered a „'space where you can be who you are, an open door, a conversation without condemnation"“ for young people that had been stigmatised by the SED (Socialist Unity Party) regime.^*

The basic idea of Open Church was to accept young people and give them space for self-development, for „articulation and realisation.“^* Walter Schilling, a pastor in Braunsdorf near Saalfeld and pioneer of Open Church in Thuringia, spoke retrospectively of „acceptance of the unacceptable,“ which for him meant „taking the individual young person as he is and not immediately pointing a finger or trying to bend him into shape.“^*

A space was created in which young people could listen to their own music, be themselves, and meet like-minded people, a space in which they could party carefree, but also voice personal problems and their critical perception of SED politics. Young people contributed their own ideas to different event formats, helped shape the Open Church programme and learned to take on responsibilities. 

As a safe space, Open Church attracted youth subcultures that did not conform to the social norm, who did not want to conform, and who thus experienced exclusion and criminalisation by the authorities.

In addition to the blues scene and the punk scene, whose fans found freedom in Open Church, young people in the GDR had also taken to the skinhead subculture from the early 1980s onwards. However, since the 1970s, parts of the international skinhead movement had become radicalised and started espousing racist, neo-Nazi attitudes, which they acted out violently.

Right-wing Attacks in the GDR

In the 1980s, right-wing skinheads in the GDR also violently attacked migrants and dissidents. In Jena, an Open Church workshop with several punk concerts that took place at the Junge Gemeinde Stadtmitte in June 1987 ended in a confrontation between punks and violent skinheads.^* In the entrance area, opposite a larger group of punks, a small group of skinheads started a fight with a punk from Halle.

The punk was able to fight back. However, the example demonstrates the perceived superiority and dominant behaviour of the skinheads, who were already confident enough to appear as a group at that time, more than two years before the political system change in the GDR.

In reaction to the right-wing radical violence, the first independent antifascist groups were founded in Potsdam and Dresden in 1987. In the spring of 1989, another antifa group formed in East Berlin in the Church from Below, which began publishing an Antifa Info Sheet in July 1989 and reported on radical right-wing attacks, as well as on racism and xenophobia in East German society.^*  

Rightwing motivated attacks on the Young Community safe space

Once the antifa’s first organisational structures had been put in place in Jena at the end of 1989, the local Autonome Antifa (Autonomous Antifa) set up weekly meetings in the rear building of Johannisstraße 14 and posted an advert in the Thüringische Landeszeitung (TLZ) newspaper in January 1990.^*

Its aims were clear from its self-introduction in the TLZ: it wanted to educate and inform the public on right-wing extremism, to undertake prevention work and to provide advice for victims of right-wing extremist violence. In so doing, the antifa highlighted the existing lack of provision. 

Presumably as a reaction to the antifa’s use of the rooms and to the fact that an „international café“ was to be set up in the space, the Young Community in the city centre was targeted by right-wing violence several times in early 1990 for providing a shelter for political dissidents. In the course of three right-wing motivated attacks, the offenders destroyed the facilities and caused water damage. The extent of the damage can be seen in three images from March 1990. 

Although the Young Community in the city centre resumed its work in October 1990 with the city’s new youth pastor Lothar König, youth worker Jürgen Wollmann, and social deacon Michael Reisgies, the rear building needed a lot of work and was not back in use again until 1991.

Dealing with right-wing extremist youths

Much like the youth centres, which were formerly run by companies and mass organisations but had been transferred to municipal ownership during the system change, the Young Community in the city centre was also faced with the question of how to deal with right-wing extremist youths. In 1990, these had a greater presence in the city than in 1989.^*

In 1991, the city’s youth pastor Lothar König, the social deacon, and the youth worker for the district church were still trying to mediate between young people who saw themselves as „right-wingers“ and „left-wingers“. In the summer and autumn of 1991, they organised football matches between skinheads from Lobeda and young people from the Young Community. The Ostthüringer Zeitung (OTZ) reported on this in several articles and quoted the staff of the city youth parish office on 2 October 1991:

The City Youth Parish Office rejected this approach in early 1992, as Lothar König described in an interview in 2001^* :

So, in early 1992, the Young Community in the city centre took the decision not to pursue the path of mediation between „right-wing“ and „left-wing“ youths any further.

Attacks on political dissidents’ housing and cultural projects

Attacks on members of the Young Community in the city centre and their spaces were accompanied by numerous other violent attacks by right-wing radicals on political dissidents and people from migrant communities. On Ascension Day, 24 May 1990, an occupied house in Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 58, where an autonomous youth centre had been established, was attacked. Right-wing radicals deliberately forced their way into the space where left-wing youths had set up living quarters and a café.

A visitor who photographed the departing attackers had to flee across the roof of the house when the neo-Nazis noticed his camera and returned to the house. The photos document the attackers approaching, armed with baseball bats, and the photographer’s escape.^*

Unlike in the areas Lobeda and Winzerla, there were plenty of safe spaces in the city centre for politically opposed young people in the form of the Young Community, the Autonomous Youth Centre and the Kassablanca. However, these were fragile and could become fear zones when attacks by right-wing radicals occurred. Those affected by right-wing violence had no choice but to defend their spaces and re-establish safe spaces on their own. 

Text: Katharina Kempken