BONN, Germany, April 14 (UPI) -- More than 70 peace marches are planned for the Easter weekend in what has become an annual tradition in Germany.
But the number of people taking to the street is expected to be down this year, the newspaper Deutsche Welle reports. Strong feelings about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which brought the last big surge of protestors out in 2003, have tapered off, and the nuclear standoff with Iran has not replaced it.
"The topic is too far away and leaves most people rather cold," Dieter Rucht, a social science professor in Berlin, said.
Manfred Stenner, head of the Peace Cooperative Network, which is based in the old West German capital Bonn, is not discouraged. The 52-year-old remembers the late 1960s, when opposition to the Vietnam War was widespread, and the early 1980s, when one million people gathered in the grounds of Bonn's Hofgarten to protest nuclear weapons.
"Man, the feeling that you had put this all together was simply great," he said.
