Neubrandenburg, a German town two hours north of Berlin, with its 65,000 residents and one of Germany’s largest lakes, has become an unexpected battleground for cultural differences. The focal point of this clash is a flagpole situated atop the town’s 19th-century train station. Primarily bare, the town’s flag is occasionally seen flying, and the LGBT+ rainbow flag makes an appearance once annually during the local pride parade.
Despite this tradition, both this year and the last saw the rainbow flag being removed and substituted with banned swastika and nationalist emblems. Tensions peaked when the town council announced its decision to prohibit the display of the rainbow flag above the railway station entirely. In response, the town’s openly gay lord mayor, Silvio Witt, declared his resignation.
Despite having endured a decade-long homophobic campaign against him and his family, including online harassment and unproven bullying allegations, Witt remained a well-liked local leader. He secured his re-election two years prior with a hefty 88% of the votes. He attributed his popularity to his non-partisan stance and dedication to town improvements like fixing pavements and playgrounds. Witt’s resignation is both a personal protest and a cautionary message about the growth of extremist political alliances in Germany.
The proposal to ban the rainbow flag was submitted by Tim Grossenmüller, an independent local councillor who runs a hairdresser’s and gym in Neubrandenburg. In a statement to the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily, he said, “We are not against the rainbow flag, we are against the fetish parties that accompany it.”
To get his proposal approved, he needed, and successfully gained, the support of the largest party in the municipal council, the populist-nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD). He also received the backing of three representatives from the nascent left-conservative alliance BSW, named for the leftist politician Sahra Wagenknecht. On the same night as the prohibition of the rainbow flag was sanctioned with the endorsement of BSW, Dr Wagenknecht, during a televised discussion in Berlin with a co-head of the Alternative for Germany party, asserted that her new coalition would not collaborate with the extreme-right party “in its existing shape”.
When queried about the AfD-BSW collaboration in Neubrandenburg this week, Dr Wagenknecht stated her lack of objections towards the rainbow flag. “We don’t scrutinise each decision from local councils at the party’s top level,” she said. In the German federal parliament (Bundestag), where she serves as an MP, she stated her party was willing to support any “correct” bills, as long as they were not proposed by the AfD. “And in this instance,” she added, “the [flag] proposal wasn’t initiated by the AfD.”