May Day in Kreuzberg

Along with this annual street festival, ranks of the New Social Movements and the German Trade Union Confederation organized large May Day demonstrations in West Berlin.

The center of this resistance (and the left scene in general) was situated at Mehringhof (in Kreuzberg 61), where, among other things, the campaign office was located.

[3] The traditional street festival was peaceful at first, but the mood among the leftists was damaged by the search of the census boycott campaign office.

In addition, the police had also initiated anti-rioting operations against the Affected Block at the 1 May demonstration of the German Trade Union Confederation.

This led to the block leaving the German Trade Union Confederation demonstration under protest and joining the street festival.

The looting of a branch of the Berlin supermarket chain Bolle at the underground station Görlitzer Bahnhof attracted large media attention.

Only years later it became known that the supermarket fire was not caused by members of the autonomist scene, but by a lone pyromaniac who had witnessed the looting whilst passing by.

[5] The underground station at Görlitzer Bahnhof, a center of the unrest, was set on fire, with hundreds of protestors drumming on the cast-iron struts of the elevated railway in order to make noise.

Using water cannons and armoured riot control vehicles, the police advanced against the burning barricades and the remaining protesters.

Among those arrested was Norbert Kubat, who took his own life on the night of 25–26 May whilst in police remand, after he was found hitchhiking along Skalitzer Straße by plainclothes officers on the morning of 2 May.

In response to the suicide, there was an arson attack on a department store, Bilka, on Kottbusser Bridge during the night, and on May 28, a funeral march with approximately 1,500 participants took place.

[5] As a public reaction to the riots, a special unit of the Berlin Police, the Einheit für besondere Lagen und einsatzbezogenes Training (EbLT), was set up.

This unit received special equipment and training for street fighting in order to make "evidence-capturing arrests" during violent demonstrations and to act aggressively in the center of the action.

The Autonomous movement's interpretation of the events proved controversial: "Their judgments varied between the excitement of keeping the police out of the neighborhood for so long, and the fact that so many people took part in a revolt in what they considered to be completely depoliticized actions."

Mai" (Onwards to the revolutionary 1 May), and the quote from Rosa Luxemburg, "The revolution is great, everything else is quark", over 6,000 people were mobilized for the demonstration despite police countermeasures.

However, the mood within the left-wing radical movements was angered by the hunger strikes of the Red Army Faction prisoners and the arrest of two Berliners on charges of membership of the militant women's group, The Amazons.

Even after the demonstration destroyed several sex shops, plundered a supermarket, set fire to a waste disposal container and looted another department store, the police only reacted by making a cordon.

Initially the police only made a loudspeaker announcement to stop throwing stones, but then disbanded the festival using tear gas and water cannons.

At times even larger police units were surrounded and forced to throw stones in return, since, according to them, their only other option would have been to shoot.

"[1] Within the Autonomous movement, the events were criticized, where questions were asked about the political motives behind the rioting and the purpose of it in regard to their goals.

On May 10, the Trade Union of the Police organized a demonstration against Interior Senator Erich Pätzold's strategy of de-escalation and the violence on 1 May.

It was later speculated that chief executive officer Heinz Ernst, who was close to the Die Republikaner political party, deliberately acted negligently to discredit Pätzold and his de-escalation strategy.

The leftist movement tried to address this situation with a close coordination between the organization of the street festival and demonstration, as well as political action days in advance.

While Interior Senator Pätzold wrote that the relatively peaceful 1 May was a triumph of his "de-escalation and presence" concept, the Autonomous scene believed that the behavior of the police was the trigger for the riots.

Interior Senator Erich Pätzold had to publicly apologize for a police attack against two press photographers and a camera team from Radio Free Berlin.

According to the General Students' Committee of Technische Universität Berlin, the media were also responsible for the disturbances due to their reporting on the demonstration in the run-up to 1 May.

The Berlin police's new tactic is to counter violence by supporting alternative events, such as the new Kreuzberg street festival Myfest [de], which takes place in district SO 36, the traditional center of the riots.

This procedure is part of the Aha Konzept, first implemented in 1999, which supports, among other things, the annual Kreuzberg street festival, Myfest.

The Myfest takes place in the traditional center of the riots in SO 36, and is intended to prevent them by promoting the presence of tens of thousands of peaceful visitors.