Berlin, First of May

We have ways of celebrating the first of May in Berlin. It begins on the 30th April with Walpurgisnacht, (the night of the witches as depicted in Goethe’s Faust) when basically everyone gets dressed up to party. There was a choice of eighteen different concerts across the city with a range of types of music to suit almost every taste.

May Day is still referred to as ‘Workers Day’ and the tradition continues with trade union demonstrations across Germany. The main march here this morning - “Fair not precarious: work for Berlin!” - ending with a rally at the Brandenburg Gate, called for more work and better benefits, while revolutionary demonstrations and live music continued all day in the borough of Kreuzberg.

Perhaps the fact that in Britain we normally have to wait to celebrate until the following Monday has robbed the first of May of its historic significance. But near Rostock in the north of Germany, anti-G8 protestors are taking the opportunity for a ‘dry run’ of their blockade of the 12 kilometre barbed wire fence - which has already been erected around the G8 summit location of Heiligendamm.  More than a month before the summit is due to take place, hundreds of women and men are camping near the only entrance, dubbed the new Checkpoint Charlie, and have undergone ‘blockade training.’

According to Der Spiegel this week, both civil society and security forces in Germany have been gearing up to Heiligendamm for 2 years, since Gleneagles. The G8 NGO Platform is predicting 100,000 protesters from around the world. Meanwhile a total of 16,000 police are mobilised to secure the fence and another 11,000 military to patrol the coastal security cordon. Given the official cost of the 3 day summit  (100 million euros) and six months’ disruption to local life, the inhabitants of Rostock, which is one of the poorest areas in Germany with a rate of high unemployment, are not surprisingly quite sympathetic to the protestors’ cause.