Berlin Hanf Parade – 7th August 2010

It came as a pleasant surprise when, as I was exploring what used to be East Berlin on the first day of my summer holiday this year, I came across the Hanf Museum and learned of the planned “Hanf Parade” due the following weekend.

“Hanf” of course is the German word for “Hemp”, which perhaps implies a focus on the “non-drug” aspects of cannabis and whilst that is true to some extent for the campaign as a whole, the focus of the activists and those who support it probably isn’t on the plants potential to make rope.

The Hanf Museum is a small but informative collection based in an otherwise quite dull part of town at Mühlendamm5 in the mitte area of Berlin, not far from the big Soviet era TV tower which dominates the city skyline. Inside are housed exhibitions explaining the many uses of cannabis from hemp fibre through medicines to what google translates as it’s “beverage” uses. To those of us familiar with the full potential of the cannabis plant this is all nothing new, but of course it isn’t something most people are either aware of, or if they’ve been told simply don’t believe. This is one of the aspects of cannabis law reform which makes it so different from general drug law reform of course, if cannabis the recreational drug were to be allowed, the many other used of this truly remarkable plant would become available overnight.

Downstairs in the Hanf Museum there’s a small cafe / internet bar which sells a truly delicious cup of hemp tea along with a wide range of hemp food products and it’s down here that the Berlin Hanf campaign meets.

The first question is “why Berlin”? Well, Berlin is a very special city quite unlike any other in Germany. This is due to the city’s history which goes much further back than the recent history of division and cold war repression, indeed further back than the dark days of National Socialism. Berlin has long been a place where individual liberty and tolerance have been the order of the day. Berlin today has many economic problems, but it’s a young city and a very vibrant place where people are ware of their personal freedoms and more often than not have been willing to take to the streets to defend them over the years.

The legal situation in Germany regarding cannabis is confused to put it mildly. Back in the early 90’s it was ruled that hardline prohibition went against the German constitution, hence possession of “small amounts” of cannabis is not a criminal offence. Of course, it has never been decided what constitutes a “small amount” and in most of the country small really does mean small, but in Berlin it means a usable amount, a few grams.  In Berlin  cannabis use has long been widespread and largely socially accepted and these days it’s not unusual to see people having a sly smoke all over the place and in some of the more subcultural places the bong sits on the bar.

This tolerance of “small amounts” is in itself causing problems of course, as we’ve noted before every “small amount” has to come from somewhere, it has to come from a larger amount. The present regime of tolerance is all very well, it’s certainly better than we have but it’s not good. Apart from anything else there are the problems of contamination just as we have here. As in the UK the government is very unwilling to highlight these problems, claiming rather illogically that warning users of contamination issues would encourage use. The press is also full of the same sort of reefer madness stories we’ve had here, including of course the usual “skunk” claims of massive increases in strength in recent years

The Hanf Parade took place on August 7th – it’s always on the first Saturday of August. The advertised start was 1.00pm next to the TV tower. In the event things got off to a slow start but eventually people turned up and the parade started off with speeches from the main organisers.

After a while more people turned up and the march began. We followed a route which took us from Alexanderplatz towards the famous avenue Unter den Linden, then following a devious route past the alternative centre “Tacheles”, home to mutiod waste and other artists and finally by way of Friedrichstrasseto the Bundestag, the seat of German government.

In the event around 2000 or so turned up for the march, a low number given the large number of cannabis users in Berlin and the general willingness of people there to join in with demos. The march was pretty much what you might expect of course, although the presence of the fully armed and somewhat scary police (who didn’t have visible ID) ensured there wasn’t as much smoking on the march as there might have been otherwise. Apparently there were 26 arrests on the day, 25 of them for simple possession who shouldn’t have been arrested given the law and who were released immediately because of the legal help on hand. The march organisers had ensured there were solicitors available to make sure the police only did what they were allowed to do under the law, which does beg the question of why these 25 arrests for simple possession were made in the first place. The 26th arrest was for something else, as far as I could tell what we would call “obstruction”, so that was a little harder to sort out.

The problem I had was, not being a  German speaker, I didn’t really know what the speakers were saying. I did have a partial translation from my friend Claudia and I think it was all pretty predictable stuff. Berlin isn’t a place to go to learn German normally, just about everyone speaks English to some extent or another and if you do try to speak German, you usually get answered in English. So it was a little odd to find the whole demo and indeed the Hanf museum was only available in German, perhaps that’s something they could think about in future years.

Also in the back of my mind is a question as to whether the hanf parade is quite aimed at the majority of cannabis users, perhaps some of its imagery is still associated with the hippy roots of the campaign – something I sympathise with but sadly accept that things have moved on a bit.  I’m also not entirely convinced that this sort of event is a really effective way to campaign for cannabis law reform, perhaps this is an issue that activists need to thrash out. The reason for doing it is obvious, there are a huge number of decent, no-problematic cannabis users out there who simply want to be left alone and thus it makes sense to show that this huge body of support exists, but of course if that’s the aim you do need to pull a huge number of people to your show of force demo if it’s to work.

As one of a number of actions though a celebration of the cannabis culture is a positive thing and to demonstrate that, if anything, is the aim of such marches.

The main organiser of the Hanf Parade is Steffen Geyer and we met up after the parade at the Hanf Musuem where I tried to record an interview with him. Perhaps predictably my MP3 recorder picked this time to shut down just a couple of minutes into the interview, so it will have to wait until we can do it all again. He explained the way German law works, which is very different to UK law. The law is aimed at preventing people providing others with poisons, hence the crime is more related to supply than possession. Of course though, possession always involves supply and even just passing the hash pipe could be considered supply.

The most obvious feature of Steffen is his thigh length bright red dreadlocks which despite press reports of the parade are not a wig. The stereotype driven first impressions though actually give a totally false idea of what he’s really about. Before the failed interview I attended the Hanf Parade de-brief meeting, which Steffen of course chaired. It was an amazingly business like meeting which Steffen kept in strict order, typing up notes as he did so on his laptop. He spoke with the voice of an experience campaigner and it’s clear he’s in it for the log run.

Steffen Geyer (left) addresses the Hanf Parade

Planning is now underway for the 2011 parade, which will take place on August 6th, UKCIA will be there next year if all goes well providing the much needed English language dimension to their efforts. Watch this space for more info closer to the date.

The Hanf Parade website (in German) is here and English here Steffen Geyer’s personal (German language) website is here with a google semi-translation here