In the Advent season, you actually go to the Ore Mountains to get in the Christmas spirit. You rummage in the shops and at the toy makers ‘stalls for nutcrackers and tree hangings, marvel at the large pyramids in the villages and the flying buttresses in the windows, visit miners’ parades, listen to choirs and tower blowers, drink mulled wine at Christmas markets. The magic of Advent.
But this year, the second with a pandemic, there is no Advent magic in the Ore Mountains. The Christmas markets have been canceled, miners’ parades are taking place online, hotels are closed, choir concerts and brass music are canceled. The streets and markets in the mountain towns are empty like never before. Which day tourist travels to a region with incidence values around 2000, a vaccination rate of 45 percent and locals who prefer to wander through their streets in the evening against the “Corona dictatorship” than to be vaccinated? The 2G rule is already translated completely differently in the Ore Mountains dialect: “Geener gommt.”
Tobias Wenzel, however, cannot complain about a lack of customers. He is an undertaker in Marienberg, and it is well known that people always die. The chief master of the Saxon state guild formulated the death rate at a consistently high level. Wenzel, 54 years old, a tall man with a bald head, also says that the number of corona deaths has so far been rather low and cannot be compared to a year ago. “Not yet,” he adds. Because the fourth wave in the Ore Mountains did not start until mid-November. “The hospitals are full again, and so are the intensive care units,” he says. “It is not unlikely that the number of deaths will rise sharply again.”
Farewell in 2G or 3G – secular funeral ceremonies with stricter rules
In the crematoria, however, they are better prepared for this than in the previous year, the systems were brought up to date over the summer, and plans for multi-shift operation are already on the drawer. And his small company next to the Marienberger Friedhof is also prepared for this. “We have enough hygiene items, tests, disinfectants and masks in the warehouse,” he says. “Because we cannot afford to close the business for 14 days because of a corona case.”
Wenzel was annoyed about an order from the Ministry of Social Affairs. “The church has enforced that there is a different treatment of mourners at secular and ecclesiastical funeral services,” he says. “For secular people, the 2G rule applies to entering the mourning hall, which means that the celebration is classified as a private gathering. In church funeral ceremonies, however, the 3G rule is used, so even those who have not been vaccinated can then enter the funeral hall. “
He himself had to hold an open-air celebration in Zöblitz last week. With minus two degrees and an icy wind, the mourners would have had to stand outside by the coffin in the cemetery because they did not want a church celebration and not all of them had been vaccinated. “How do you think something like this is received by people? We have had relatives here who collapsed when we had to tell them that a celebration in the mourning hall is not possible. And then there is cursing, and rightly so, against the government and the Minister of Social Affairs. And on the church, which should actually strive for reconciliation and a balance in society. “
The people of the Erzgebirge suffer because everything has been canceled
Just under half an hour’s drive to the east, in the town hall of Olbernhau, Mayor Heinz Peter Haustein sits dejectedly at his desk. “For us people from the Erzgebirge, Christmas is the best time,” says the FDP politician, who has also sat in the Bundestag for two legislative periods. “And now look at how bleak everything looks here. No Christmas market, no mulled wine, no tourists. Everything canceled by the Prime Minister, overnight. “Haustein, a giant who seems to be at rest, shakes his head. “People completely forget what that means for people’s psyche. People are getting more and more angry and dissatisfied. “
Olbernhau has just under 11,000 inhabitants and a current seven-day incidence of 1,504.5. This means that 160 residents have been infected since the beginning of the month. “People get sick, of course, and there are hardly any empty beds in the hospitals,” says Haustein. “But that could have been foreseen. The federal government had a whole summer to prepare for it. ”
Instead, however, the number of intensive care beds has decreased nationwide compared to the previous year because nursing staff could not be retained. And Health Minister Spahn said in the summer that boosters were not necessary, the vaccine would last for years. Now, by the end of the year, 30 million people are to be vaccinated quickly.
The doctors in the Erzgebirge cannot keep up with the boosters
“A vaccination site is now being set up again here in Olbernhau,” says Haustein. “Two doctors sit there and vaccinate, but they don’t manage more than 120 a day. Then the vaccine is also scarce. It is already clear that in the Ore Mountains alone it will take four months to vaccinate only those who want it. “The mayor waves this off, he has spoken himself directly into a rage for his circumstances. “I wonder how short-sighted politics act. No wonder that people have lost confidence. “
And then we’re back to the Christmas markets. At the end of September, he and other mayors of other municipalities turned to the state government with a request for binding statements on whether markets are possible this year, says Haustein. “We wanted planning security for the craftsmen and traders. Until mid-November we were told, continue with the preparations, everything can take place. And then, when almost all the stalls were set up and the goods were ordered, everything was canceled overnight. “
He and some of his colleagues thought briefly about opening the Christmas markets. “But we didn’t do that, we’re loyal to the state,” says Haustein with a fine smile. “Otherwise anarchy will break out here.” But it is also a fact that people are getting more and more angry, more irritable. “Something is piling up.”
Every Monday evening there are “walks” in Zwönitz
What that means can be seen on the evening of that day in Zwönitz. The city with 12,000 inhabitants near Annaberg-Buchholz currently has an incidence of 1689, which means that coronaviruses have been detected in 200 citizens of the city since the beginning of the month. However, Zwönitz hit the headlines with his so-called walks, which opponents of the anti-corona measures have been taking every Monday evening in the city center since March last year. In the past there have also been violent attacks, once Saxony’s Prime Minister Kretschmer was loudly wished for death to the neck.
On this bitterly cold Monday evening, however, the usual meeting point for the “strollers” is cordoned off. Police vans are parked around the market square, officers prevent entry. A game of cat and mouse begins, in which the locals have an advantage, of course, because they know the alleys and shortcuts in their city better than the police officers from outside the city.
“Free Saxons” run along, Reich citizens, supporters of the AfD
After all, there are about a hundred “strollers” together, most of whom wander through the streets in silence. There are men and women, most of them between 30 and 60 years old. Well-known right-wing extremists from the “Free Saxons” run with them, Reich citizens, avowed supporters of the AfD, which has called for walks in Central Germany together with other right-wing radical groups. Every now and then a young woman shouts “Peace, freedom, no dictatorship”, but nobody picks up the slogan. People talk more to each other, about 1933 and 1989 and how the dictatorships of that time resemble today’s “corona vaccination dictatorship”. And how brave you yourself are to oppose it.
Behind the train, which thins out by about half on the way, are a dozen police officers with pistols and helmets on their belts. In a residential area above the market, where there are stylish new single-family houses – “This is where the doctors live who are paid by the state for vaccinating,” shouts one of the demonstrators – then it’s over. On Robert-Koch-Strasse, of all places, another police cordon prevents them from marching on.
The “walkers” are surrounded for half an hour. Then an official informs them in a polite tone that administrative offense proceedings are being initiated against them for violating the corona protection requirements, which is why their personal details must now be determined and they must be photographed. The participants face a fine of 250 euros. The demonstrators are led out of the cauldron one by one. There is no resistance, only cautious threats. Someone shouted that you know your Pappenheimers, and that everyone would be brought to justice if things would soon be different in this country. “Just like the hundred-year-old concentration camp secretary,” shouts another.
Debates with the pastor about the alleged “opinion dictatorship”
“They are stupid people,” says Pastor Michael Tetzner the next morning. We are sitting in the Zwönitz rectory, a wide table between us. Tetzner is a pastor as you imagine him to be – a friendly smile, an open, straight look and fearless when it comes to your own opinion. “I once referred to the walks in a sermon and said that these people would lie if they called our country a dictatorship. And anyone who starts such a walk with a lie is not good. ”Many parishioners agreed at the time and thanked him for saying this from the pulpit because they too found these demonstrations unbearable.
Others had contradicted him, after all, he meant a dictatorship of opinion that existed in this country. “But that was also untrue, I replied, because after all you could have, express and discuss different opinions. Completely different than in the GDR, which apparently many have forgotten. “
Tetzner had only recently sparked discussions in his community. In a church service he read out the letter of appeal from the hospital chaplain Wilfried Warnat. Warnat, who works in the Ore Mountains Clinic in Annaberg-Buchholz, appeals to people to get vaccinated. This is the only protection that makes it possible not to postpone upcoming operations and to relieve the clinic employees who are working at their performance limit. “Please think of your fellow human beings in God’s name – and think of yourself!” Ends the pastor’s letter of appeal.
This petition was not read out in all churches in the Ore Mountains. Many pastors refused on the grounds that they did not want to widen the gap between those who oppose and support vaccination and would rather keep the peace in their community.
Michael Tetzner has no understanding for this. “We are in a situation in which one can no longer remain silent, in which we have to participate and position ourselves,” says the pastor from Zwönitz. Of course, members of his congregation had also countered him that the vaccination was a personal decision and that the church had to stick to it. “But when we have such a low vaccination rate here in the Ore Mountains and the hospitals have to fly patients out because they no longer have beds, then I can’t look the other way. A vaccination, as I said in my sermon, is an act of charity for me. ”The serum does not offer 100% protection, according to Tetzner, but it helps the disease to progress more gently and that you don’t need a bed in a hospital . “For me that is charity.”