Hundreds of protests in Dresden against Björn Höcke and Pegida

Civil society, parties and religious communities protest against Pegida in Dresden. For the first time, the CDU and FDP have also called for a counter demonstration.

Several hundred people gathered in Dresden on Monday evening to protest the Pegida movement, which is hostile to Islam and foreigners, and to Thuringian AfD leader Björn Höcke. Höcke had promised to come to the 200th Pegida rally since the movement was founded.

While initiatives such as the “Dresden Nazifrei” alliance regularly demonstrate against Pegida and her front man Lutz Bachmann, the Dresden district associations of the CDU and FDP had also called for a counter-demonstration for the first time. The protest was supported by the National Association of Jewish Communities, the Catholic Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony, among others. The counter-demonstrators were within sight and hearing of the Pegida congregation. The FDP wrote on Twitter that around 1,500 participants attended the demonstration on Neumarkt.

Numerous politicians signed the protest call from the weekend. The supporters include the former Federal Minister of the Interior Gerhart Baum (FDP), Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer, the State Ministers Barbara Klepsch, Sebastian Gemkow and Christian Piwarz (all CDU) as well as the Bundestag and Saxon FDP leader Frank Müller-Rosentritt.

The broad-based protest against Höcke's appearance at Pegida had started on Monday evening with events in two Dresden churches. Between 600 and 700 people came to a prayer for peace in the Frauenkirche, as Claudia Hofmann from the Frauenkirche Foundation told the Evangelical Press Service (epd).

Höcke was a guest of Pegida in May 2018. In January 2017, he made headlines in Dresden when he spoke of a "stupid coping policy" with regard to history in Germany and called for a "180-degree turnaround in memory ."