Opernhauskrawalle

Opernhauskrawalle is the Swiss German term generally used for the youth protests at the end of May 1980 in the Swiss city of Zürich, a municipality in the Canton of Zürich. Also called Züri brännt ("Zürich is burning"), these events marked the 'rebirth' of the Hippie movement in Switzerland in the 1980s.

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, 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.. 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.

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