With the hoisting of the rainbow flag at Hamburg City Hall, the celebrations surrounding Pride Week began in the Hanseatic city. With its six colorful stripes, it is considered a symbol of the queer community. "This is always a great sign and at the same time an appreciation for the many events that will take place in our city in the coming days," said the queer political spokesman for the Greens, Farid Müller, on Friday.
In addition to a large demonstration, numerous specialist events and a street festival are planned around the Binnenalster. The rainbow flag has been hoisted at the town hall on Christopher Street Day (CSD) in Hamburg since 2008, this year for the first time at the beginning of Pride Week.
The official opening will take place on Saturday at Kampnagel. The initiative should
The big CSD finale will take place the weekend after next with the Pink Pauli Festival in St. Pauli. It should be the biggest closing party in Hamburg so far. In 15 locations - including the Docks, Schmidts Tivoli, the Sommersalon and the WunderBar - all well-known party organizers, DJs, artists, drag queens and influencers of the Hamburg scene would gather in the Kiez.
Hamburg Pride is expecting more than a quarter of a million people for the big CSD demo on August 6th. Under the motto "On the road! Diversity instead of violence” is intended to address the increasing number of hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intergender people (LGBTIQ*). It starts at noon on the Lange Reihe in St. Georg and is to lead via Steinstraße, Mönckebergstraße, Glockengiesserwall and Lombardsbrücke to the Neuer Jungfernstieg, where a final rally is planned.
The CSD will be particularly political this year, as the co-chairs of Hamburg Pride, Nicole Schaening and Christoph Kahrman, emphasize: "The increasing violence against queer people moves us very much, and we are not willing to accept this development." They demanded from politicians "finally more measures to protect LGBTIQ* from hatred and violence." According to her, 67 hate crimes against people in the queer community were reported to the police in Hamburg last year - more than twice as many as in the previous year. Nationwide there were more than 1000.
Hamburg's DGB chairwoman Tanja Chawla also called for violence against queer people to be resolutely opposed. Individual attacks would certainly cause a stir. “But even at work, many queer colleagues are confronted with derogatory comments and hostilities. Such incidents usually go unreported," she said. "But this is important, not only to have reliable figures, but also to develop targeted strategies and measures to prevent violence against queer people."
The CSD - internationally often called "Pride" - is reminiscent of the events of 1969 in New York: Police officers stormed the "Stonewall Inn" bar on Christopher Street and triggered a multi-day riot by gays, lesbians and transsexuals.
