Excerpt:
As it does every Advent, this history-laden city has erected the gift stalls, the glühwein stands and the Ferris wheel of Germany's oldest Christmas market, around the Frauenkirche, the 18th-century church that was magnificently rebuilt after the Allies' catastrophic bombing in 1945. But this year, there is tension behind the seasonal jollity.
For the past seven Mondays, people have taken up the battle cry of East Germans protesting their Communist government 25 years ago — "Wir sind das Volk!" ("We are the people!") — and fashioned it into a lament about being overlooked by political leaders of the present.
Dresden's demonstrators, echoing the populist fears coursing around Europe, are a motley mix of far right-wingers in the National Democratic Party, or N.P.D., young hooligans and ordinary folk who feel ignored as foreigners pour into Germany — at least 200,000 this year alone — seeking jobs or asylum.