On Friday, 28 February at 10 a.m., the colourful peace banners will once again be displayed on the façade of Chemnitz Town Hall to promote the Chemnitz Peace Day on 5 March. At around 10 a.m., the caretakers of the town hall will be seen carrying out the final touches.
Gerald Richter from the citizens' initiative Aktion © and representatives of the participating schools will also be available to answer questions on Neumarkt at around 10 am.
"The interest in designing peace banners has grown from year to year and has long since spread beyond Chemnitz. For many years, there was only the workshop at the Montessori school. Then we also designed banners with special schools and, thanks to the Stefan Heym youth art project, we are now travelling all over Saxony. Last year, an incredible 56 new banners were created, nine at André-Gymnasium Chemnitz, nine at Pestalozzi-Förderzentrum, seven at Gymnasium Rochlitz and nine at Chemnitzer Schulmodell. With 16 new banners, the Montessori school once again contributed the largest share.
In 2025, five banners from the 'Georg Götz' special needs centre (special focus on hearing) and one banner from the Albert Schweitzer secondary school were added. The six workshops in very different schools have resulted in a wide variety of messages of peace," says Gerald Richter, initiator of the art project.
The banners will be presented at the town hall, at and in the Roter Turm gallery, at the opera house, in the Jakobi church and, for the first time, at the new secondary school on Hartmannplatz.
All the banners designed so far will also be on display there from the week before the summer holidays. Aktion © is organising the exhibition from 23 June to 8 August 2025 as a Capital of Culture project at the new secondary school on Hartmannplatz in the immediate vicinity of the Hartmannfabrik. All four façades of the school will then be covered with the peace banners.
On 26 June 2025, the schools involved in the banner project want to announce the world record as the largest youth art project and celebrate the day with the IMAGINE festival, including a large graffiti workshop in the open space in front of the school on Hartmannplatz.
There are now 323 of the seven metre long banners. This corresponds to a length of 2,261 metres. Cross banners and other formats were also designed, bringing the total length to around 3,290 metres.
In May of last year, the Chemnitz peace banners were also presented in the Paul Löbe House of the Federal Government, where they took centre stage at the Federal Government's ceremony and the subsequent democracy festival to mark 75 years of the Basic Law.
Chemnitz Peace Day
On 5 March, Chemnitz Peace Day commemorates the bombing of the city 80 years ago and all victims of the Second World War. Every year on this day, thousands of people from Chemnitz take a stand for peace, democracy and against right-wing extremism and xenophobia. The main event on 5 March at 6 p.m. on Chemnitz Neumarkt is entitled "Reconciliation".
On Peace Day, bookmarks of the new banner motifs and brochures on the banner project will again be distributed to passers-by on Neumarkt.
Further information can be found at
www.chemnitz.de/friedenstag
www.chemnitzer-friedenstag.de
www.chem nitzer-friedensbanner.de