This year, the dominant themes were the planned reinforcements in Germany, the Russian war against Ukraine and the situation in the mediate East.
According to police reports on Saturday (19.04.2025) about 1800 people gathered in Berlin. The spokesperson for the Easter March office was pleased with the scale of mobilisation. As AFP said, the expected attendance was somewhat higher than in erstwhile years.
– There were fresh concerns, individual concerns about peace," said Willi van Ooyen. As an example, he gave a debate on the compulsory military service and reinforcement of the Bundeswehr. This attracts the attention of young people in particular.
The fact that around 100 Easter marches are taking place throughout Germany besides shows that "the peace movement is able to organise peace and disarmament efforts against militarisation both inside and outside the country," said Willi van Ooyen.
The organizers do not yet have any information about the number of participants in the Wolf march. According to van Ooyen, 4,500 people participated in Stuttgart and 1500 in Kassel. "This year's Easter marches are peculiarly addressed to the fresh government and request that Germany be able to peace alternatively of war," explained Kristian Goll of Netzwerk Friedenskooperative, who coordinates marches.
He believes that "instead of borrowing fresh debts and spending tens of billions of euros on arms, disarmament treaties and intelligent diplomacy are needed".
Common safety architecture
In this way the war in Ukraine should besides be brought to an end, he demanded Goll. "A common safety architecture in Europe should be worked out to guarantee peace for Ukraine and to cover Russia in the long term".
As the Easter March Office in Frankfurt am Main explained, the peace movement with Easter marches shows that it rejects “obsessive reasoning of war propaganda, threats of war and war itself”. The movement sustains its imagination of a planet without atomic weapons, a demilitarized Europe based on an global agreement, and "Germans from whom the land does not come out, but peace".
Great Saturday was the main day of conventional Easter marches. However, any are besides scheduled for Sunday and Monday.
Easter peace marches in Germany are traditionally organised in a decentralised way. They are held in different cities under different slogans. The Easter March in Bonn is held under the slogan “Yes for Peace – Not for War Prepared”. In Kassel, it reads "Peace – Disarmament – Climate Protection – Come to the Easter march", and in Leipzig, it reads "Against Armourment and Social Cuts".
The Easter marches in Germany have been held since the 1960s. The top attendance was in the 1980s during the Cold War, erstwhile hundreds of thousands of people attended. In fresh years, participation in marches has fallen importantly – the number of participants was usually from respective 100 to respective 1000 people.
