Bad Hersfeld | No more reading aloud: anti-right-wing grandmas unwelcome in schools

Members of the Grandmas Against the Right initiative are protesting against the rise of right-wing extremism. In Bad Hersfeld they were also involved in schools. That wasn't welcomed by everyone. Photo: dpa/Heiko Rebsch The grandmothers against the right in Bad Hersfeld, Hesse, are no longer allowed to do educational work in schools after an anonymous complaint. The headmaster “got into trouble,” explained Petra Gromann, one of the six women from the initiative’s organizational team, to the “Frankfurter Rundschau.” The decision about inviting external guests is the responsibility of the school management. “As a result, all further appointments were canceled.”

Until then, the women had led reading groups at elementary schools in the city under the motto “Reading aloud for tolerance and diversity.” At the end of March 2026, they also organized a project day for the ninth graders of a comprehensive school, where they provided information about right-wing extremism. The media also reported on this. However, the reporting had consequences for the initiative: the school authority received a complaint. According to Gromann, it reacted immediately and drastically. Further project days of the citizens' initiative were prohibited.

A month later the next restriction came. After a school principal's conference warned against working with the grandmas against the right, the reading groups were ultimately banned. Because the initiative has not yet received a satisfactory justification for the exclusion and does not feel heard by political representatives, it has decided to go public again at the weekend, said Gromann.

The Bad Hersfeld CDU city association has now also commented. He welcomes the school authorities' decision to ban appearances by the right-wing grandmas at schools and is also critical of the initiative's activities in daycare centers. It is expressly not about questioning democratic commitment or the confrontation with extremism, racism and discrimination, it says in a statement. These topics are important components of democratic educational work. What is crucial, however, is who conveys this content and with what political objective.

At the request of the Green Party parliamentary group in Wiesbaden, Education Minister Armin Schwarz (CDU) made it clear that "civil society actors such as the 'Grandmas Against the Right' can in principle be involved in lessons - as long as they appear in a role as teaching guests," as the group said in a statement.

The Greens in the state parliament emphasize that schools must be party-politically neutral, but they must not be value-neutral when it comes to the principles of liberal democracy. The parliamentary group calls on the Ministry of Culture to prevent the neutrality requirement from being interpreted too narrowly and to grant the grannies against the right and similar actors access to schools. “The neutrality requirement must not serve as an excuse to keep democratic engagement against right-wing extremism out of our schools.” nd

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