Tens of thousands of people have flocked to an anti-racism concert in Chemnitz which aims to drown out recent far-right protests and violence in the eastern German city.



Under the banner #wirsindmehr (‘There are more of us’), city authorities estimated that as many as 50,000 people had come out to challenge a wave of far-right and neo-Nazi demonstrations since a Syrian and an Iraqi were suspects in a fatal stabbing more than a week ago.

After a minute’s silence for the German Cuban victim, identified as Daniel H, speakers addressed a crowd that bobbed with anti-racism placards. “If only there was this much solidarity every day – and not just in Chemnitz, but across the country,” said Rola Saleh of a Chemnitz youth group.

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Originally to be held near a towering Karl Marx sculpture in Chemnitz, the event was moved to make space for a larger crowd. Organisers were expecting more than 20,000, but that had been far exceeded by early evening, with police saying that 5,000 people had arrived for the concert by trains from Leipzig, the Saxony region’s biggest city, alone.

Earlier on Monday, the chancellor, Angela Merkel, had urged Germans to mobilise against hate. “These people who march and are prone to violence – some have also shamelessly shown their closeness to Nazism – they stand neither for Chemnitz nor for Saxony overall, nor are they ‘the people’,” said her spokesman, Steffen Seibert.

Even before the first chord was played, the lineup caused a stir. The general secretary of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, criticised the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for supporting the open-air concert. She told Die Welt she was irked by the inclusion of Feine Sahne Fischfilet, a controversial rock band known for its far-left lyrics which refer to street violence and hurling stones at police.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The band Feine Sahne Fischfilet perform at the concert in Chemnitz. Photograph: Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters

Other bands playing in Chemnitz included Germany’s famous punk outfit Die Toten Hosen, Chemnitz-based indie band Kraftklub and the rappers Marteria and Casper.

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Toralf Staudt, author of several books on far-right extremism, said the mix of performers remained “a fair cross-section of the German music scene” and believed the concert would have clout. “Music plays a big role in this sphere. It has also long been the most important recruiting tool for neo-Nazis,” he said.



On its Twitter account, event organisers urged festival-goers to donate to a fund that would be shared between the family of the stabbing victim, and local anti-fascist and anti-racist groups.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Organisers had expected more than 20,000 people to attend, but said it far surpassed that. Photograph: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images

Meanwhile, the political response to the protests stepped up a notch. Politicians from both left and right pressed for surveillance of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) after some of its leaders marched in Chemnitz alongside the far-right Pegida, which stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.

The SPD leader, Andrea Nahles, was among those urging state scrutiny. “The AfD allowed itself to become a front organisation for radical rightists in the streets of Chemnitz, either willingly or unwillingly,” she told reporters.

The AfD, which entered the German parliament last September as the third largest party, has seen its support rise following the Chemnitz protests. Its share of the vote rose two percentage points to 16% according to an RTL poll, as the SPD slipped to 17%.