Aachen: When the police go to the Autonomous Center without a decision

On the evening of September 6, 2026, around 200 people marched unannounced through downtown Aachen to protest against the AfD's election victory in Saxony-Anhalt. Under Antifa flags, towards the main train station, then to the Autonomous Center (AZ) near the train station. The police speak of pyrotechnics against officers, of 15 masked people. What happened next is the real scandal: The police broke into the AZ, searched the entire building, abducted several people to establish their identities - without, as the AZ explains in its reply, presenting a search warrant. There were no arrests. There were clashes around the center throughout the night and no one was injured.

Two versions face each other. The police say: We were attacked and followed the mob. The Autonomous Center says: You first cornered us, then surrounded us, then marched into our rooms without any legal basis. This second version is not a side note. Entering and searching private rooms without a court order is the exception in Germany, tied to strict conditions of imminent danger - and it is precisely this exception that is conspicuously often sought against left-wing centers, while the same haste is rarely observed in right-wing clubhouses.

The state security agency is now investigating particularly serious breaches of the peace and physical attacks on law enforcement officers - offenses that have been specifically developed and used against left-wing structures for years, while attacks from the right-wing scene on journalists, refugees and dissidents are regularly recorded as individual acts. The pattern is not new, but it repeats itself with a regularity that you can only ignore if you want: first a spontaneous, unannounced gathering is declared a security problem, then the reaction to police harshness itself becomes a criminal offense, and finally there is a search of a left-wing place that has been known for decades as a collective punishment for everyone who frequents it.

The fact that the reason for the demonstration was the AfD election victory in Saxony-Anhalt is no coincidence or a side note. When a right-wing extremist party gains real options for power, resistance on the street grows - spontaneous, unannounced, angry, because the parliamentary path shows how little it does against the shift to the right. The state responds not with differentiation, but with large-scale operations and house searches. That says more about the priorities of the security authorities than any press release.

What counts now: AZ Aachen is examining legal action against the operation. This review deserves publicity and support, not silence. Anyone who squats houses, runs centers or takes to the streets when the extreme right wins needs solidarity - and a public that takes a close look when the police consider their own legal limits to be exceptional cases when things go against the left.

Sources

WDR: Confrontation between police and demonstrators at the Autonomous Center
Zeit Online: Pyrotechnics attack on police officers at a demo in Aachen