Opernhauskrawalle

A three-day celebration of the Zürich Opernhaus and the opening of a festival was celebrated on 30 May 1980. Uninvited, about 200 protesters attended the festival opening and demanded an autonomous youth center. The communal Stadtpolizei Zürich and state Kantonspolizei Zürich police corps were informed beforehand and were stationed in the foyer of the opera house as a precautionary measure. As the youths occupied the exterior stairs of the opera house, the demonstration degenerated into a street battle between the demonstrators and the police, who were equipped with water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets. The youth protests culminated on 30/31 May 1980,[1] at the present Sechseläutenplatz square in Zürich, but later spread throughout the whole city. A public referendum contributed to the riots, as the city of Zurich planned to grant CHF 61 million to the opera house of the rich Zürich people for a renovation and an extension of the building, but nothing to the planned Rote Fabrik cultural center in Zürich-Wollishofen, on the other side of the Zürichsee lake shore.

It was felt by the protestors that the demands of the young people to have their own cultural center had been studiously ignored for years and that the then-astronomical grant to the opera house demonstrated this lack of commitment to the youth by the conservative government of Zürich.[2]. Their reaction was a "long pent-up anger" as a newspaper headlined. "Züri brännt" is a household word, and is the title of a punk song by the band TNT. Andreas Homoki, director of the opera house, described the situation in the "hot summer of 1980" as explosive, and in fact "there was not enough room for a youth culture" by virtue of a lack of alternative governmental cultural programs for the youth in Zürich.

From 1976 to 1989, the Criminal Police Department III (KK III), i.e. the State Security Department of the Zürich City Police, kept a file of photos under the title "Schmieren/Kleben" (literally: smearing/glueing). Without the intensive collecting activities, which the police showed especially in the late 1970s and around 1980, they would have disappeared long ago. After the so-called Fichenskandal and its treatment at the level of the city of Zürich by a parliamentary commission of inquiry, the photos landed in the city archive in 1993. The photos published in book form in April 2018 document the fear of left-wing extremist activities of those years, along the lines of the German RAF, the rise of the punk movement, early works of the Sprayer von Zürich, followed by the slogans of the Zürich youth unrest. While the police focused on possibly subversive messages and the documentation of damage to property, they also captured everyday street scenes.[3]

These factors contributed to the so-called Opernhauskrawall, meaning riots or youth protests at the Zürich Opera House (German: Opernhaus). The youth protests, beginning with this one in Zurich in 1980 and continuing throughout 1980 and again in 1982, mark the beginning of the modern youth movement in Switzerland, generating interest in "alternative" culture and a revival of the former Hippie movement.

A first political compromise was the so-called AJZ (a shorttime youth centre at the Zürich main station), and the establishment of the so-called Rote Fabrik alternative cultural centre in Wollishofen in late 1980. Rote Fabrik still exists, and claims to be one of the most important alternative cultural places in the greater Zürich urban area. The most prominent politicians involved were Sigmund Widmer and Emilie Lieberherr, then member of the city's executive (Stadtrat) authorities.[4][2] The Swiss newspaper WOZ Die Wochenzeitung exposed in 2006 that even an undercover police officer saw action in 1980[5] – in October 2016 a book about Willi S's double life as revoluzzer and police officer was published.[6]

Caused to the TV live debate on the riots and the proportionality of the operations of the municipal Stadtpolizei Zürich and cantonal Kantonspolizei Zürich police corps, the youth movement got additional popularity by "Anna Müller" and "Hans Müller" as the representatives of the youth movement in the today's federal Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen on 15 July 1980.[4] The fictional names are Swiss equivalents of the terms John Doe and Jane Doe.

Zürich brännt[7], a Swiss documentary film based on video material of 1980, was filmed in black and white at the locations of the youth protests in May 1980 and afterwards. It was aired in Swiss television SRF in May 2014. Beginning on 22 January 2015, the film was shown on occasion of the Solothurn Film Festival as one of the milestones of the Swiss film history.[1][2]

• Peter Bichsel; Silvan Lerch: Autonomie auf A4. Wie die Zürcher Jugendbewegung Zeichen setzte. Flugblätter 1979-82. Limmat Verlag, Zürich 2017. ISBN 978-3-85791-833-9
• Heinz Nigg: Wir wollen alles, und zwar subito! Die Achtziger Jugendunruhen in der Schweiz und ihre Folgen. Limmat Verlag, Zürich 2001. ISBN 3 857913754
• Heinz Nigg: The Video Movement of the 1970s and 1980s. London Bern Lausanne Basel Zurich. Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2017. ISBN 978-3-85881-801-0
• Christian Koller: Vor 40 Jahren: Züri brännt, in: Sozialarchiv Info 1 (2020).
• Tanja Polli: Das Doppelleben des Polizisten Willy S.: Erinnerungen an die Zeit, als Zürich brannte. Orell Füssli, Zürich. ISBN 978-3037630686.[8][6]
• Philipp Anz, Jules Spinatsch, Viola Zimmermann: Schmieren/Kleben. Aus dem Archiv KKIII der Stadtpolizei Zürich 1976 - 1989. Edition Patrick Frey, Zürich 2018. ISBN 978-3-906803-61-6.[3][9]

• Marco Tackenberg: Jugendunruhen in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 24 March 2012.