Gen Z protests in 34 German cities; Berlin police see 5,000

Young Germans rallied in 34 cities on Oct. 31 under the banner “Gen Z regelt” to demand more school funding, lower living costs and an end to compulsory military service, with Berlin police counting about 5,000 people at the Brandenburg Gate.

Organisers gave far higher figures: about 11,000 in Berlin, Euronews reported, and more than 100,000 nationwide, according to the dpa news agency. Nearly 180,000 people had signed up across the 34 cities by Saturday morning, Al Jazeera reported. Those crowd claims could not be independently checked.

The loose alliance behind the protests, whose main host cities were Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich and Berlin, said it opposes cuts to education and social services while military spending rises. Berlin police said the demonstrations were largely calm, with small problems such as pyrotechnics. Scuffles broke out between protesters and police in Cologne.

“Funding for education and social services are being cut, while the cost of living keeps rising,” said Veronika Dinter, 23, a political science student from Hannover, in comments to Al Jazeera. She called the situation “the political failure of our government” and said Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government is funding the military with billions of euros, a characterization that is hers and not an established fact. She urged police “to not confront our demonstrations with any kind of violence.”

Kilian Hampel, a senior research fellow at the Future of Work Lab at the University of Konstanz, told Al Jazeera that “many of their concerns, in particular around poor educational infrastructure, are legitimate.”

The rally also drew groups beyond the organisers’ core. Euronews reported Palestinian flags, Antifa banners and slogans such as “Stop the genocide in Gaza,” and copies of the newspaper Junge Welt, which Germany’s domestic intelligence service classifies as far-left extremist, being handed out. Organisers distanced themselves from some of that mobilisation, Euronews reported.

The authorities were divided on how to read the movement. Berlin police told Euronews before the protests there was “currently no reliable evidence of targeted extremist influence or control over this group.” The Berlin Senate’s interior department, however, said left-wing extremist and foreign-related actors were mobilising and that legitimate civil society protest was being reinterpreted as a struggle against the rule of law, Euronews reported.

The demonstrations come as protests continue elsewhere in Europe. In France, authorities said 320,000 people marched on the third consecutive weekend of demonstrations over living costs and schools, Al Jazeera reported. Our earlier coverage tracked how France arrests topped 1,300 as protests spread across Europe, and how Fitch soured on France as living costs bite across the continent.

For Canadians, the story touches a large community: more than three million Canadians reported German ancestry in the 2021 census, according to Statistics Canada. Germany’s rising military spending is also part of the wider NATO push for allies to spend more on defence, a pressure Canada faces as well.

Via Euronews and Al Jazeera. Crowd figures differ by source and are attributed above. The organisers’ demands and the extremism claims are reported as stated by the parties involved.

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