Göttingen, the “red stronghold” – and how the right is taking back what it never had

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There are cities whose reputation precedes them. Göttingen is one of those. Anyone who moves here - to study, to work, out of conviction - has already heard that this city of 130,000 inhabitants on the edge of the Harz Mountains is different: more left-wing, more contentious, more uncomfortable. For decades this was not folklore, but reality. And it is precisely this reality that is at stake right now.

Didn't fall from heaven: how a middle-class city became a red one

Forget the myth that Göttingen has “always been left-wing”. Until the 1960s, this university town was conservative to right-wing liberal - characterized by traditionalist networks, fraternities and civic dignitaries. In 1968 the NPD had around 5-6 percent and two seats on the city council. The “red stronghold” is historically young – and, as researchers emphasize, it wasnot a sure-fire success.

The break came with the student movement around 1967-69. Göttingen became a center of revolt: SDS, socialist and later communist student groups, anti-authoritarian activists. The “Göttinger Mescalero” made the city notorious nationwide after the murder of Federal Prosecutor General Buback in 1977. From this milieu grew what shapes the city to this day: a solid SPD in the town hall, a green-left-liberal milieu made up of the anti-nuclear power, peace and women's movements - and underneath, visible and militant, the squatter and autonomous scene of the 1980s, its "zenith of power".

This is the point that the right doesn't understand: This city has become left-wing because people fought for it little by little - against a conservative starting point, not with it. What was fought for can be defended. That's exactly why we won't let it be taken away again.

A bastion that had to be fought for

Göttingen's reputation as a “red stronghold” is no coincidence and no merit of the administration. It was fought for – street by street, decade by decade. Autonomous groups have been active here since the 1980s, from anti-nuclear activists to squatters to the Antifa structures that gave the city its name. The Autonomous Antifa [M] set the tone nationwide in the 1990s and drove the right-wing extremist comradeship scene out of the city. During NPD marches, Göttingen was simply paralyzed by counter-protests. Right-wing small groups and fraternity members who tried to agitate on campus – they eventually gave up in frustration.

This strength has addresses. The youth center in the city center, the “Juzi” on Bürgerstrasse, has been self-managed for around four decades - a painted house that runs without a boss, without commerce and without state control, supported solely by those who use it. Beyond Göttingen, it is considered a fixed point of reference in the autonomous and anti-fascist movement: Anyone who is organized in the nationwide scene knows Juzi, and activists from all over the country - and beyond - have been guests here for concerts, congresses and solo events. A few streets away, Rote Hilfe, one of the left's oldest solidarity organizations, organizes legal protection for everyone prosecuted by the state for their resistance. The KAZ cultural center, the anti-fascist archive, the collective farms like “Dots” – together they create an infrastructure that has long since been renovated elsewhere. It is precisely this density of self-organized places that defines Göttingen. And that is exactly the goal.

This success had a price that is often forgotten today: it was work. Daily, unspectacular, often thankless work. Research, documentation, presence on the street. The Antifascist Education Center and Archive in Göttingen still records who the region's right-wingers are and what they do. The Red Help is at home here. The “red stronghold” was never a state of nature – it was a balance of power. And the balance of power can change.

The state knows this city - and has been fighting it for decades

If you want to understand why Göttingen is a symbol, you have to go back to the 1980s and 90s. Between 1981 and 1991, the authorities counted 52 “unexplained” anti-fascist actions in the Göttingen area. In 1991, the Celle Public Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation under Section 129a - the "terrorism" section - and set up the SoKo 606 special commission. Their target was not neo-Nazis, but the autonomous anti-fascists themselves, especially theAutonomous Antifa (M).

On June 5th and 6th, 1994, the largest anti-Antifa attack in the history of the Federal Republic followed: 30 searches in Lower Saxony, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, the apartments of 17 - later 25 - accused, the AStA office of the university, the information shopRed Street bookstore, a printing shop, a graphics studio. Nothing criminal was found. The accusation shrank from “terrorist organization” to pasting posters and the right to assembly. Even the artistic initiativeArt and combat(KuK) and their exhibition “Forbidden Art” became the subject of 129a proceedings – criminalization of art in a way that had never happened before in the Federal Republic. The repression was carried out by SPD ministers in Hanover.

And the world watched. British Anti-Fascist Action reported in their magazineFight Talkseveral times about the “police clampdown in Göttingen”; International trial observers traveled to keep pressure on the courts - as was the case with the arson attacks in Mölln and Solingen. Göttingen anti-fascism was never a provincial affair. It was under international observation because it was an example of how far a state could go against its left. This story explains today's distrust - it is learned.

How it turns – the chronicle of the last few months

They tip quietly, then loudly. In the last two years, a “young right-wing crew” has become visible in Göttingen – 15 to 18 year olds who specifically go to left-wing places “to look for stress”. First verbally, then with New Year's Eve rockets at the left-wing alternative “Juzi”. They daubed a rainbow-colored staircase and a memorial plaque for the Nazi book burnings - symbols chosen carefully.

In October 2025, 13 swastikas, 20 to 80 centimeters tall, on the walls, windows and chairs of the “Dots” collective bar. State security investigated; the perpetrators were never found. In June 2026 the escalation: A 17-year-old right-wing extremist stabbed a 23-year-old anti-fascist in the chest, just past the heart. Emergency surgery, artificial coma, a second operation. The perpetrator was initially released - “a self-defense situation cannot be ruled out”. More than 1,000 people then took to the streets. Then in August 2026 an image that speaks volumes: As the reactionary oneTFP Student Actionmarched on the market with a “public rosary against abortion,” a spontaneous, loud, peaceful counter-protest developed. The police beat and pepper-sprayed – against the counter-demonstrators, not against the abortion opponents. Two ambulances, for the left. “Not a neutral law enforcement force, but a protective force for fascists.” And in September 2026, the stage of the same “Dot” in the inner courtyard of the Börnerviertel burns down to the ground. The cause of the fire is officially open –in the left scene a right-wing background is assumed.

Four incidents, one pattern, one location. Anyone who still reads this as a series of coincidences doesn't want to see what's happening here.

Not a special case in Göttingen

What is happening in Göttingen is the local front of a nationwide shift. The AfD achieved a landslide victory in the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt; For the first time there is a threat of an AfD-led government. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the number of right-wing extremist suspects has more than doubled in a short period of time. What observers call the return of the “baseball bat years” is not a metaphor: the violent radicalization of young people, the hunt for queers, leftists, migrants - and no longer just where the right has always been strong, in the east, in the small towns, but also in the middle of the supposedly safe university town.

The pattern repeats itself everywhere. In Aachen, the police move into the Autonomous Center without a decision; in Berlin the “Potse” should be silenced before it even has a new house; In one city after another, self-governing spaces are coming under pressure - sometimes through right-wing attacks, sometimes through evictions, sometimes through both. At the same time, what was unthinkable years ago is becoming normalized in parliament: When the AfD presented a “remigration” plan, even the Chancellor called it “ethnic cleansing” - and continued to govern as if it were a side note. The shift to the right is not an outbreak, it is a climate.

This is exactly what makes Göttingen a symptom. If the right takes back what it never had, then the old certainty – “not with us” – is just that: an old certainty. “Maybe we were too sure that something like that couldn’t happen here,” said one activist after the knife attack. A sentence that goes beyond the city.

Göttingen has long been circulating in right-wing channels as an enemy image: “Red Front city,” they sneer, as if that were a threat. We take the label and wear it with pride. Yes – red city. And that's exactly why our stages burn too brightly for them.

The state is looking in the wrong direction

And here we have to be clear. The swastikas on the “Dots”: perpetrator unknown. The rockets on the “Juzi”: perpetrator unknown. The knife stabber: free again for now. While the clearance rate for right-wing violence against left-wing places tends to be zero, the authorities can think of a surprising number of things when it comes to left-wing structures - state security, surveillance, repression. This is no coincidence and no excessive demand. It is a political priority setting.

A state that has invoked the danger from the left for decades, while right-wing terror was organized from Munich in 1980 via the NSU to Hanau, has a structural perception problem. In Göttingen, this problem can be seen on a small scale: anyone who daubs a rainbow staircase will not be caught; Anyone who defends them is targeted. So the balance of power is shifting – not just because the right is becoming stronger, but because the state is allowing it to happen.

What follows from this

The good news is that Göttingen proves that there is another way. This city remained a bastion for decades not because the right was too weak, but because the left was present. The 1,000 on the street after the knife attack, the wave of solidarity after the swastikas, the defiance of the “Dots” collective – that is half of the answer. The other is more uncomfortable: presence cannot be preserved. “Where did the movement break off?” asks an activist who was there in the 2000s. Right-wing graffiti that remains for weeks is an indicator. The number of people who see daily anti-fascist work as an urgent task has fallen.

The shift to the right is real, it is nationwide, and it has arrived in Göttingen. But it is not a law of nature. What was fought for is defended - street by street, night by night. You spray swastikas, we paint over them. They set fire to stages, we rebuild them. They call it “Red Front City,” we call it home. We won't budge a meter. No forgiving, no forgetting – and certainly no retreat.