Riot on the Revolution Square - Augustusplatz
Leipzig's grandest square, flanked by the Gewandhaus concert hall and the Opera, was the flashpoint for Germany's most polarising anti-lockdown rally in November 2020. A crowd of roughly 20,000 gathered here, ignored mandatory mask rules, broke through a police cordon, and then marched along the very ring road that the 1989 Monday demonstrators had made famous.
About this place
On 7 November 2020, the anti-lockdown movement known as Querdenken turned Augustusplatz into the centre of a fierce national confrontation over pandemic law and protest rights. The Saxon administrative court had permitted up to 16,000 participants; police counted roughly 20,000 by mid-afternoon, with about nine in ten ignoring the mandatory mask requirement that was a condition of the permit. The rally's organisers had chosen the slogan Friedliche Evolution, a deliberate echo of 1989's Friedliche Revolution, the peaceful revolution that had swept through this very square. When police dissolved the rally at around a quarter to four, a section of the crowd broke through the cordon, throwing bottles and firing pyrotechnics, before marching the ring road in the footsteps of the Monday demonstrators. Five federal police officers were injured. Far-right parties, including the NPD and Der III. Weg, had mobilised their supporters for the event. The square also carries an older scar: on 30 May 1968, the SED regime detonated the University Church of St. Pauli that had stood here for six centuries, on the orders of party leader Walter Ulbricht. A theology student who protested received twenty-two months in prison. The Paulinum, Leipzig University's ceremonial hall completed in 2017, was designed to recall the outline of what was destroyed and stands as a monument to what power can erase.
Key facts
- 20000 participants — Police counted roughly 20,000 people on Augustusplatz for the November 2020 Querdenken rally, far exceeding the 16,000 the Saxon administrative court had permitted overnight.
- 5 officers injured — Five federal police officers were injured when participants broke through a police cordon after the rally was dissolved and marched along the ring road.
- 1968 year — The SED regime detonated the University Church of St. Pauli on this square on 30 May 1968. The Paulinum, opened in 2017, was built to echo the outline of the lost church.