You won’t believe what the five largest protests in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany were.
Volksverpetzer
Millions of people took to the streets across the Federal Republic to protest right-wing extremism, racism and rearmament, and to call for climate protection. What do these waves of protest reveal about the majority in society—and why do right-wing voices online often seem louder than they actually are?
We took a look at the five largest protest movements in the history of the Federal Republic. The result: Three brought millions onto the streets in the past 7 years alone. And three of them were directed against right-wing extremism and racism. The other two were against rearmament and in favor of the climate. The largest Pegida or Querdenker demonstrations, on the other hand, drew only tens of thousands. Millions demonstrated against the far right. Why the “silent majority” is more left-wing than many think. And what the far-right extremists can nevertheless do better than we can.
Being loud does not mean being the majority
Sometimes it feels as though everyone in this country is just shouting. The loudest fill the talk shows, comment sections, and your timeline, and they claim to speak for everyone. Those who do not shout, on the other hand, are quickly ignored. And those who are ignored eventually start to believe that they really might be in the minority. But being silent does not mean doing nothing. There have always been moments when the many stood up, when it mattered. We simply remember them too rarely. And even fewer of us know how many people there actually were. Also because the true scale of the masses on the streets is not represented proportionally in the media.
Polls are one thing. But in order to show a different picture for once, we also compared the largest protest movements in the history of the Federal Republic. The basis is the number of participants. We are looking at waves of protest, meaning a limited but not precisely defined period surrounding an event, not ongoing protests or annual demonstrations and generally not individual days of protest. And we are focusing on the FRG – otherwise the peaceful revolution of 1989 would of course be included, but it is difficult to compare with the other protests. I promise you: Afterwards, you will look differently at the question of who might constitute a majority in this country.
But first, a few limitations
Before we begin: Demonstration figures are estimates, and they often differ widely. At the large Berlin demonstration in January 2024, the police spoke of “more than 100,000” participants, while the organizers said 350,000. Protest researcher Jannis Grimm from Freie Universität Berlin arrived at 230,000 to 260,000. In Hamburg, the interior authorities recounted the numbers and found that the police had been broadly wrong in their initial estimate. Police figures are also only estimates.
There were no drone images or online area calculations in 1983 or 1992, and although we consider our own demonstration count robust, it too consists partly only of conservative estimates and averages. In addition, anyone who attended several demonstrations during a wave of protest will of course be counted several times. So take the figures as an indication of scale. Where two places are close together, the order could look different with other estimates.
We have ranked these to the best of our knowledge, but in some cases the order could also look slightly different. So do not take the exact ranking too seriously. And of course it is possible that we overlooked other protests in our research. We welcome suggestions in the comments!
The streets vs. the polls
And yes, many people on the streets do not automatically mean a majority, even if that is the argument we want to make here. People who demonstrate are not a representative cross-section of the population. Researchers at the University of Konstanz pursued precisely this question in 2024: whether the “silent majority on the streets” was present at the demonstrations against the far right. And yes, the respondents were better educated than average, saw themselves more as part of the upper middle class, and placed themselves politically to the left of center.
Why do we nevertheless consider it an important argument? Because polls measure what people think, and less what they are willing to sacrifice their Saturday in sub-zero temperatures for. The polls actually confirm the picture from the streets. A majority wants the Federal Constitutional Court to examine the AfD, a good two-thirds see it as a danger to democracy, and a majority rejects an AfD minister-president.
The dispute over who “the people” are has also been fought out on the streets for decades. We believe that we must also talk about these protests (and their proportions), because, as we will see below, there is good evidence that they shift the mood in the country and are even reflected at the ballot box. And because mass protests are still underestimated. There is a great deal indicating that they have an effect.
Number 5: Autumn of Peace 1983
Fifth place in our ranking goes to the Autumn of Peace of 1983. On October 22 alone, according to estimates, around 1.3 million people demonstrated at various locations in the Federal Republic. This included a human chain between Stuttgart and Neu-Ulm, in which 200,000 to 400,000 people took part.
A decision many in the SPD did not want
What was it about? The NATO Double-Track Decision of 1979. NATO first wanted to negotiate with the Soviet Union over its SS-20 missiles and, if the negotiations failed, station its own intermediate-range missiles in Western Europe from 1983 onward, including in the FRG. The driving force behind this was Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD), against the wishes of many in his own party. In 1982, Schmidt was replaced by Helmut Kohl through the only successful constructive vote of no confidence to date. By then, the peace movement had already been on the streets for a long time: In 1981, Bonn saw the largest demonstration in the FRG up to that point, with 300,000 participants.
And this is where the FDP enters the picture, at the time represented by Helmut Schäfer, who criticized the peace movement as an “irrational current” and called its neutralism “simply and plainly grotesque.” On November 22, 1983, the Bundestag voted in favor of the stationing with the votes of the CDU/CSU and FDP. The main demand of the Autumn of Peace was therefore not met.
The missiles came, the Cold War went
Immediately after the decision, there was initially nothing but frustration. That same year, the United States began stationing Pershing II missiles on German soil, the Soviet Union broke off the negotiations in Geneva, and the peace movement had failed.
And yet: In 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty, which was intended to abolish all land-based intermediate-range missiles—precisely the weapons against which hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets. The extent to which the peace movement brought this about cannot be proven. Historians do say, however, that criticism from civil society at the time “not only impressed governments, but also influenced them.” What can be proven, on the other hand, is that the Greens entered the Bundestag for the first time in the 1983 federal election with 5.6 percent of the vote—the party’s political breakthrough. Without the peace protests, this might never have happened.
Number 4: Demonstrations against right-wing extremism 2025
For fourth place, we travel the shortest distance into the past: to the demonstrations against the far right in January and February 2025, before the federal election. According to our own demonstration count, almost 1.9 million people took to the streets during these weeks at more than 730 demonstrations.
The firewall breaks, the streets rise up
After the act of violence in Aschaffenburg on January 22, Friedrich Merz completely adopted the AfD’s position. Like the AfD, he demanded permanent border controls and the rejection even of people entitled to protection. On January 29, the Bundestag adopted a Union motion to tighten migration policy, with the votes of the FDP and AfD. Only a single CDU member voted against it. The firewall had been broken. Anti-democratic Alice Weidel called it a “great day for democracy.”
Understandably, German society’s majority did not see it that way. And it punished the CDU directly at the election. A study by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation showed that the CDU had lost some votes with its rightward course. Some went to the far-right AfD, but above all, the Left was strengthened as a result. Even before the vote in the Bundestag, tens of thousands of people took to the streets nationwide on January 25. After the Union and AfD vote, there were even more, now under the motto “We are the firewall.” The posters said things like “Nobody likes Nazis except Merz.” The demands included no cooperation between the Union and AfD, defense of the right to asylum, and a general rejection of right-wing extremism.
The streets win
The Union’s bill already failed in the Bundestag on January 31. At the federal election in February, however, the AfD doubled its result. Particularly because, so shortly before the election, the CDU had given the AfD’s issues the biggest possible platform and thereby normalized them once again. This time, unlike during the Autumn of Peace, the protests at least had short-term success. Or, as Freitag commented: “This week, the streets spoke, and they won.” The protests could not contain the damage the Union had inflicted on democracy. The Union later regretted it. But today it is making exactly the same mistake again.
Number 3: Fridays for Future
Fridays for Future takes third place. At the three largest climate strikes of 2019 alone, around 2.3 million people took to the streets in total. But how did it all begin? With 15-year-old Greta Thunberg sitting in front of the Swedish parliament in August 2018 with a sign reading “School strike for the climate.” More and more students followed her from week to week, first in Sweden, then throughout the world. By the end of the year, strikes were taking place in almost 300 locations. In December, the movement also reached Germany: In Kiel, around 500 students stood in front of the state parliament and demanded an end to coal.
The demands were very specific: net zero by 2035, a coal phase-out by 2030, 100% renewable energy by 2035, an end to fossil-fuel subsidies by the end of 2019, the shutdown of a quarter of coal-fired power plants, and a tax on greenhouse gases.
FFF dominated the discourse
Yes, measured against its maximum demands, the movement failed to achieve its goals. But anyone who reads a defeat into this has not understood how successful protest and politics work. In the end, the movement achieved a great deal. Fridays for Future placed climate protection—an extremely tiresome political issue because it costs money and demands change—as prominently as never before in the political discourse. According to the Federal Environment Agency, the share of Germans who consider the environment and climate the most important problem tripled at the time, from 16 to 49 percent, and the agency attributes this to FFF action days.
The movement was also noticeable at the ballot box: According to a study by the ifo Institute and other research institutes, around 7 percent of the Greens’ gains in votes in the 2019–2021 elections can be attributed to the protests. The stronger the climate movement was in a region, the greater the Greens’ gain in votes.
And it may also have changed the law: In March 2021, the Federal Constitutional Court declared parts of the Climate Protection Act unconstitutional because it shifted the burden of emissions reductions irreversibly to the period after 2030. Among the nine young complainants was Luisa Neubauer, co-founder of Fridays for Future in Germany. The Bundestag then tightened the law: Since June 2021, the goal of climate neutrality by 2045 has applied, five years earlier than before. You do not achieve your goals before you have moved closer to them. And that is what FFF achieved.
The issue disappears, but the people were still there
Perhaps only now are we realizing what an enormous effect the movement had up until around the time of COVID. Today, climate seems almost not to be an issue at all, even though climate change is becoming ever more serious and combating it ever more urgent. With its “Flood the Zone with Shit” strategy, the AfD has made a major contribution to shifting the discourse so far to the right that climate barely appears in the debate anymore.
But that changes nothing about the core point: It was not fringe groups but millions of people who took to the streets for the future and for the climate. They were not silent; they were there, and they forced politicians to talk about the climate. And they achieved successes. The fact that the AfD and the rightward shift are now undoing these changes does not alter that. On the contrary: It shows that we could manage it again.
Number 2: Candlelight chains 1992/93
Second place in our ranking goes to the candlelight chains of 1992 and 1993, with around three million participants. In August 1992, neo-Nazis and violent racists attacked migrants in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, cheering them on and threatening them with death. This is why it is also referred to as the pogrom of Rostock-Lichtenhagen. In November 1992, three people died in a far-right arson attack in Mölln, and in May 1993, five died in an arson attack in Solingen. The number of racist offenses rose from 2,598 in 1991 to 5,008 in 1992 and 6,721 in 1993.
What happened then? In Munich, four friends wanted to make a quiet statement against hatred of foreigners on December 6, 1992. Their idea: to call Munich residents into the streets to see where the silent majority actually stood. One of them was Giovanni Di Lorenzo, later editor-in-chief of Die Zeit. They expected 100,000 people; around 400,000 came. In the weeks that followed, Frankfurt, Rostock, Düsseldorf, and ultimately the whole FRG followed. Their demands: “Against racism, against violence, and for maintaining the existing right to asylum.”
Politicians give in, but Germany shows its face
On December 6, the day of the Munich candlelight chain, the Union, FDP, and SPD reached an agreement on the asylum compromise. The Bundestag passed it on May 26, 1993, by 521 votes to 132, thereby amending the Basic Law. The previously unrestricted Article 16 was replaced by Article 16a. Anyone entering via an EU country or another neighboring country would thereafter no longer be entitled to asylum. The amendment was justified as making “abuse” of the right to asylum more difficult. Instead of responding to violence against migrants, politicians buckled under pressure from the right.
Something else became visible, however: According to taz, society “finally showed its presence on the streets” in the winter of 1992, after previously “only the radical left” had called for resistance against racist terror. The candlelight chain became a symbol of collective will and solidarity-based resistance.
Number 1: Demonstrations against right-wing extremism 2024
Let us come to number 1 in our ranking. The largest wave of protest in the history of the FRG: the demonstrations against right-wing extremism beginning in January 2024. According to our own demonstration count, by early April 2024 around 4.1 million people had taken to the streets at 1,331 demonstrations. Never have more people protested. And they were protesting against the AfD’s far-right plans. And it was not long ago. We are all still here.
On January 10, 2024, Correctiv published its investigation into a meeting held on November 25, 2023, at Landhaus Adlon in Potsdam. The guests included far-right, völkisch ideologues, senior AfD officials, and the who’s who of the far-right scene. Austrian Martin Sellner, a member of the Identitarian Movement, presented his anti-constitutional concept of remigration. This means the expulsion of millions of people, including German citizens, from Germany. Courts have confirmed that the concept explicitly violates the Basic Law and is therefore anti-constitutional. Remigration became the Non-Word of the Year 2023. The jury called it a “right-wing political slogan, a euphemistic code word.”
The reaction was the largest protest movement in the history of the FRG. On Saturday, January 20, alone, more than 350,000 people took to the streets. In Hamburg, there were 50,000 according to the police and 80,000 according to the DGB; in Cologne, around 30,000. Right-wing accounts desperately tried to discredit the images: They frantically claimed that photos of the huge crowds must have been manipulated. They could not accept that their ugly ideas were held in such widespread contempt.
The Hand in Hand alliance called for a rally in Berlin on February 3 under the motto “#WirSindDieBrandmauer.” More than 1,800 organizations signed the appeal. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “That gives us courage and shows: We democrats are many—far more than those who want to divide us.”
Politicians shocked, alliance calls for rally
Demands for an AfD ban immediately gained momentum as well. Shortly before that, we had already launched the petition “Examine an AfD ban!”. After the Correctiv investigation, it exploded. On January 31, 2024, we handed Federal Council President Manuela Schwesig 802,907 signatures of our petition in the Bundesrat. By now, almost 1.6 million people have signed the petition.
The AfD plunges after the demonstrations—and nobody talked about it
As a result of the protests, the AfD plunged in the polls. While the AfD was still at 22 to 23 percent in Forsa polls at the end of 2023, six months later it managed only a meager 15–16 percent. While every percentage point gained by the far right made headlines, the AfD’s collapse received almost no major attention.
A study by the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin also shows that the protests were directly connected to this: Where there was stronger anti-racist mobilization, the AfD fell by almost one percentage point on average in elections. Unfortunately, the ban proceedings did not progress: The motions for proceedings to ban the AfD never came to a vote in the Bundestag. Nevertheless, since then we have come a good deal closer to an examination of an AfD ban, and not much is missing:
Millions of people took to the streets for human rights, the Basic Law, and against fascism so that the past would not repeat itself. Not only in the largest protest wave in the FRG, but also in the second- and third-largest in our ranking. Overall, this top five reveals a very clear trend regarding what Germans take to the streets for in large numbers, what they demonstrate for, and which values they want to protect.
The right wing is loud, but not numerous
Far-right extremists are always very loud—primarily on social media—and they also like to discredit demonstrators as being paid by the state. But where are the right-wingers themselves when there is actually something to demonstrate about? Not on the streets. Whether it is Querdenken, which lied about its Berlin demonstration, claiming that there had been 3.5 million participants when there may have been 20,000, or the radical-right Pegida, which was able to mobilize a maximum of only 25,000 people in one city. And certainly not the AfD, which at its “mass demonstrations” in Berlin attracted just 5,000 to 10,000 participants in 2018 and 2022.
So far, the majority exists only online
The only thing the right does genuinely better than we do is make it appear on social media as though there are many of them. And the platforms help them. According to a study by the University of Potsdam and the Bertelsmann Foundation, during the 2025 election campaign the AfD accounted for 21 percent of party videos uploaded to TikTok, but 37 percent of those recommended. On X, according to an investigation by ZDF Frontal and a research team from Dublin, 37.9 percent of party posts in the feed came from the AfD, even though it had created only 15.2 percent of party posts. No wonder, when X and all other social media are in the hands of American tech fascists who want to see not only their own democracy but also the European one fail. The fact that journalism increasingly adopts the AfD’s narratives instead of refuting them of course does not help either.
There are also fake accounts: Before the 2025 federal election, the research institute CeMAS counted at least four Russian influence campaigns intended, among other things, to support the AfD, using coordinated, inauthentic accounts with a reach in the millions. And on TikTok, Democracy Reporting International found 138 opaque accounts that uploaded 937 videos between January and February 2025, 97 percent of them in favor of the AfD. That is not a majority. It is primarily a performance designed to make people believe there is a majority, so that people can be intimidated and follow the supposed herd instinct.
The silent majority is not silent
Majorities can be faked online, but not on the streets, because there is not a single fake account standing there, but real people. And when millions of people come together in Germany, it is against Nazis and xenophobia, for peace and for the climate. And even if these protests rarely change laws immediately, they nevertheless have a powerful effect. Whether it was Fridays for Future, which made climate the country’s most important issue and thereby directly influenced Germany’s political landscape, or the demonstrations against the far right, which actually weakened the AfD at the ballot box. They all show that we in Germany have no appetite for Nazis.
Of course, the AfD still wins many votes. In Saxony-Anhalt, it received 43.8 percent in September, a record that should not be sugarcoated. But even there, 56 percent did not vote for it. It has a majority nowhere. Above all, it lacks a local foundation. In the 2024 local elections in Saxony-Anhalt, it was unable to fill 120 seats it had won in city and municipal councils because it simply lacked candidates. In Hesse, it cannot find enough people in many municipalities even to stand for election, and in Konstanz nobody wanted to show their face as a candidate for the municipal council. In North Rhine-Westphalia, it remained below its federal-election result in the 2025 local elections and lost all three mayoral runoffs. A mark in the voting booth is anonymous. Anyone who sits on a municipal council has to look their neighbors in the eye.
The democratic majority can also be mobilized
There is also this: The AfD owes much of its gains not to the center, but to people who had not voted before. In the 2025 federal election, it won around 1.8 million votes from previous non-voters, and it primarily mobilized a far-right potential that had always existed. We analyzed this in detail here. This is not a shift by the majority. It is a minority that has always existed and is now going to the polls.
Who the people are is also shown by what they take to the streets for. The United States, Brazil, and Serbia have shown what happens when democrats mobilize as well. We can easily achieve that in Germany too. We simply need to know that we can. And then go to the polls.