In August 2024 the Berliner Morgenpost became the first outlet to portray the man who had been standing on Friedrichstraße for months with a Ukrainian flag and a Bluetooth speaker. Dirk Krampitz first describes Lindemeier as part of the streetscape, one of those conspicuous figures Berliners walk past without looking, before asking who he actually is.
The piece supplies the biographical groundwork that recurs in every later report. Lindemeier is a psychologist in early retirement who spent much of his career working for companies and now devotes a large part of his time to supporting Ukraine, both morally and materially. On the afternoon after the interview, the paper reports, he collects a van that is to be driven to the front.
What stands out is his explanation of the location. He is not standing outside this particular building by accident: he tells the paper that he wants to reach Russians specifically, which is why he stands exactly there. The protest is addressed from the outset rather than general.
Even this early text documents the hostility that would later become the subject of criminal complaints and police deployments. Lindemeier says he has stopped counting how often he is spat at, and notes that threats of physical violence come mainly from men. As the trigger for his protest he names the Russian commemorations of the end of the war on 8 and 9 May 2022, at which he felt the memory of the Nazi capitulation was being misused.
For the chronology the article matters above all as a zero point: the Russian House itself, its operation by Rossotrudnichestvo and the question of sanctions play no part here. The institution moves into focus only in the later reports.