Germany
Since 1982 Germany has been governed by a parliamentary coalition of
the Christlich-Demokratische Union (CDU, Christian Democratic Union) together
with its Bavarian sister party, the Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU, Christian
Social Union), and their junior partner, the Freie Demokratische Partei
(FDP, Free Democratic Party). The main opposition parties are the Sozialdemokratische
Partei Deutschlands (SPD, Social Democratic Party of Germany), which is
strong in the Länder but has little influence at the national
level, the Bündnis 90/die Grünen (Alliance 90/Greens) and the
Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS, Party of Democratic Socialism).
Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) is the longest ser-ving political leader in
Europe and in Germany since 1945.
Political life in 1996 continued to be dominated by increasing dissatisfaction
with the faltering economy and the prevailing social-market model, giving
rise to wide-ranging debates over social welfare costs, tax rates, industrial
relations and corporate governance, as well as to increased levels of protests
and strikes by public sector workers and the trade unions. In an effort
both to begin to restructure the economy and to meet the requirements for
membership of European economic and monetary union (EMU), a series of austerity
measures was passed by parliament throughout the year. These measures included
cuts to a range of welfare benefits, services and jobs, and the reduction
of workers' rights (especially the controversial cut in the rate of sick
pay), which provoked widespread protests and a further erosion of confidence
in the political system.
Although the sharp fall in economic growth during the first half of 1996
levelled off by the year's end, economic growth was only 0.8 per cent compared
with 1.9 per cent in 1995. Pessimism was further reinforced by high unemployment,
which exceeded the 4 million mark in January for the first time since 1929,
reaching at year's end 10.5 per cent (much higher in the east of the country),
compared with 9.9 per cent at the end of 1995. The rate of inflation in
1996 was 1.7 per cent, 0.5 per cent down on the previous year.
Modern German antisemitism developed in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, but it built on a long tradition of Judeophobia in Christian Europe
and could claim theological sanction in the writings of Martin Luther, who
eventually demonized Jews and Judaism in a series of polemics.
The term "antisemitism" was first coined by the German political
activist Wilhelm Marr in 1879, and its rapid adoption reflected widespread
recognition of the emergence of a new, more ideological and active hostility
towards Jews after the unification of Germany.
Antisemitism in Germany before the First World War involved a rejection
of liberalism, modernism and Jewish emancipation, and was closely connected
to the growth of German nationalism and racism. Economic insecurities attendant
upon the rapid industrialization of Germany further encouraged the formation
of antisemitic political parties and organizations, which served to radicalize
mainstream German conservatism and to promote the respectability of antisemitic
views in official circles.
In the early twentieth century the conservative élites of the German
Kaiserreich were both antisemitic and highly suspicious of the Weimar Republic.
They did not accept any responsibility for Germany's defeat in the First
World War, which they explained as an act of-among other things-"Jewish
betrayal". In addition, they saw the November revolution of 1918 as
a "Jewish conspiracy".
Influential people within the political and economic élites offered
no resistance to the plethora of völkisch, militaristic and
anti-demo-cratic movements that found Germany's domestic problems and the
world economic crisis of the 1920s-1930s to be a favourable environment.
In 1933 Hitler's Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP,
German National Socialist Workers' Party) was seen to offer a solution to
Germany's economic and political crisis. Some did not take the radical antisemitic
programme of the NSDAP seriously; others sympathized with a fundamental
"solution to the Jewish question".
Immediately after gaining power, the National Socialist government began
to put its antisemitic programme into effect. German Jews faced discrimination
in stages. Their exclusion from public service and the boycott of Jewish
businesses limited their economic existence, while the "Aryanization"
programme took away their property rights; with the 1935 Nuremberg Laws
they lost their civil rights; increasingly restrictive legislation drove
them into social isolation or emigration. The November 1938 pogrom (Kristallnacht)
added the public use of force to legislative discrimination.
The first murders of Polish Jews occurred soon after the German occupation
of Poland. From February 1940 Jews were deported from Reich territory to
occupied Poland, where the Jewish population was ghettoized. Before the
start of the Russian campaign, Einsatzgruppen were formed which,
from the summer of 1941, began the systematic murder of Jews. From the autumn
of 1941 this programme of murder was carried out through gassing facilities
especially created for the purpose in death camps. The Wannsee Conference
of January 1941 served to co-ordinate the eradication of European Jewry.
By 1945, 6 million Jews had been killed.
Following the defeat of the Third Reich, the Allies sought to eliminate
racism and antisemitism in the Federal Republic of Germany. The newly established
democratic parties pursued this policy. Since 1960 anti-Jewish incitement
has been a criminal offence. In 1985, denial of the Holocaust was criminalized.
In 1995 the law defined denial more precisely: it no longer requires that
denial be an offence against the dignity of man for it to constitute a punishable
act. Today antisemitism in what was the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)
exists both as a personal prejudice (as shown by opinion polls) and in an
organized form on the political far right.
In the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), racism and antisemitism
were seen as having been "stamped out" by the introduction of
socialism. Following a brief period of "political cleansing",
responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich was placed on the Federal
Republic. In the early 1960s, in an attempt to discredit the FRG, the GDR
security service organized an antisemitic campaign there (e.g. during the
Eichmann trial). Despite the policy of anti-fascism, far-right and antisemitic
groups began to appear in the early 1980s. The fall of the Berlin Wall in
November 1989 led to an interchange of far-rightists between east and west,
and the subsequent freedom of reporting brought the existence of extremism
in the GDR to world attention.
A ban on far-right parties, together with the arrest of leading neo-Nazis
and activists, largely denied the far right a public forum, so that the
development of a more significant, violent extremist scene in the new Länder
was halted. Contrary to their own assertions, the principal far-right
west German parties-Die Republikaner, Deutsche Volksunion and Nationaldemokratische
Partei Deutschlands (see parties, organizations, movements)-failed to win
sufficient members and officials in the new Länder. Thus, with
local exceptions, far-right activities remained a marginal phenomenon.
The German constitution and subsequent legislation grant the victims
of "political persecution" in other countries the right to asylum
and resettlement in Germany. In 1996 there were 116,367 applications for
asylum (down from 127,937 in 1995), about 3 per cent of which were successful
by the year's end. The former Yugoslavia was the principal country of origin,
followed by Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka. Since July 1993, when
the criteria for granting asylum were tightened, the number of applications
has decreased dramatically.
The number of refugees was also lower than in 1995 (610,000). In particular,
the number of ethnic German resettlers further diminished, while other applications
for resettlement diminished even more drastically-from 22,000 in 1995 to
13,000 in 1996.
The fundamental reform of the nationality law, on the agenda since the wave
of racist attacks of the 1990s began, has not made any progress. By the
end of the year there had been only a number of changes in the law to allow
for the quick expulsion of foreigners who commit crimes, and the refusal
of the re-entry into Germany of asylum-seekers who visit their homeland.
In May, the federal constitutional court decided that the application of
the "Drittstaaten-Regelung" (Third-State Rule) shortened the decision-making
process and that its restrictions on the right to asylum were legal.
In line with the introduction of austerity measures (see general background),
in October the government signed a refugee repatriation agreement with Yugoslavia
that provided for the return of some 135,000 refugees to Serbia and Montenegro.
The German interior minister, Manfred Kanther, declared: "This agreement
underscores the fact that Germany is not an immigration country." Similarly,
during the previous month, Land interior ministers had already signed
an agreement allowing them to begin deporting some of the 340,000 Bosnian
refugees resident in Germany. There were intense political disputes between
CDU/CSU politicians and those from the SPD and the Alliance 90/Greens about
the timing-just before the winter-and the speed of the repatriation. In
fact, only a few hundred refugees per month have been returned to their
homeland.
Although violence or harassment directed at foreigners continued to occur
within society as a whole, the number of incidents declined in 1996, as
was the case in 1995. Direct comparison with previous years' figures has
been made difficult because of a change in the method of recording incidents.
According to the Bundesamt für Verfassungschutz (BfV, Federal Office
for the Protection of the Constitution) there were 8,730 far-right offences
in 1996, of which 2,232 were against foreigners. The Bundeskriminalamt (BKA,
Federal Office for Criminal Affairs), which records only violent offences,
stated that the number of violent incidents fell by nearly 20 per cent in
1996 to 441 reported cases, compared with 540 in 1995.
Throughout the year violent incidents with a suspected racial motive attracted
a great deal of media attention and political commentary.
On 18 January, ten people died in an arson attack on a hostel for asylum-seekers
in Lübeck that was initially attributed to far-right activists, and
four neo-Nazis were questioned by the police but later released. Eventually,
a young occupant of the house was accused of arson, the suspected motive
being personal. His trial began in October and has polarized public opinion:
while civil rights and anti-fascist groups accuse the police of not pursuing
the trail of possible neo-Nazi suspects, others support the prosecution,
arguing that the circumstantial evidence available points to the guilt of
the accused. The trial continues.
In June, two skinheads attacked a group of black British building workers
in Mahlow, a town south of Berlin. The skinheads chased the Britons, who
tried to escape by car. One of the skinheads, Mario Pötter, threw a
brick through the rear window, causing the car to swerve and hit a tree.
The driver, Noel Martin, was paralysed from the neck down as a result of
the accident. The two passengers escaped with light injuries. In December,
Pötter was sentenced to eight years in prison and his co-defendant,
Sandro Ristau, was jailed for five years. They were convicted of grievous
bodily harm after the prosecutor failed to make a case for attempted murder.
The attackers admitted associating with neo-Nazis, but claimed not to belong
to any particular group. The judge expressed his shame at the existence
of xenophobia in Brandenburg, as well as his hope that the verdict would
"shake up" the people of Brandenburg. A further charge is to be
brought against Mario Pötter for scrawling swastikas and obscenities
about Jews and blacks on the walls of his cell.
In February, a report by Amnesty International (AI) suggested that police
brutality against foreigners was on the rise in Germany. The human rights
group accused the authorities of not taking the problem seriously. AI also
demanded the renewal of the investigation-abandoned in October 1995 by Cologne
prosecutors on the grounds of insufficient evidence to bring charges-of
five officers suspended for violence against a Rom in October 1994. AI claims
that prosecutors had ignored medical evidence and witness statements.
Since the summer, a series of crimes against holiday-makers, foreign workers
and the staff of oriental fast-food shops in the east German states of Mecklenburg-West
Pomerania and Brandenburg have been the subject of intense public discussion.
Similar attacks also took place in Kamern (Saxony-Anhalt), Thuringi, and
in Barleben near Magdeburg (Saxony-Anhalt) in June and July.
Elsewhere in Germany, racially motivated violence included an attack on
a Turkish-German friendship society in Hannover in August and the severe
injury of an Italian worker and several attacks on Turks in Potsdam in October.
There was little development in the situation of the far right during
1996. In March, the interior minister of Rhineland-Palatinate expressed
concern that far-right organizations had become increasingly akin to "terrorist"
groups, keeping arms caches and maintaining contacts with similar organizations
abroad, some of which trained terrorist-like fighters. Several far-right
"black lists" containing the names of journalists, constitutional
protection agents, police officers, public prosecutors and members of the
Landeskriminalamt (District Office of Criminal Affairs) were discovered
during the year.
Failure in elections in previous years has led to a decline in membership
of the main German far-right parties and, despite mobilization and success
at local parliamentary elections (see below), there was little activity
from any of the parties in 1996.
Die Republikaner (REP, The Republicans) is a populist party whose programme
demands a stronger Germany, the reclamation of Germany's former borders,
a more aggressive foreign policy and limitations on the rights of immigrants
and asylum-seekers. The party was founded in November 1983 in Bavaria. In
the past, antisemitism in the party was expressed mostly in the form of
innuendo.
Since the change of leadership in the REP in December 1994, when Franz Schönhuber,
the founder and long-standing chairman, was replaced by the thirty-nine-year-old
lawyer Rolf Schlierer, the party has steered a more moderate course, distancing
itself from the violent far right. This has led to internal quarrels and
repeated public criticism by the still-popular Schönhuber. Schlierer
was re-elected chairman at the party conference in October.
Schlierer's "moderate" course paid off by way of success in the
Land parliamentary elections in Baden-Württemberg in March.
Although the REP is estimated to have only 15,000 members, the party received
9.1 per cent of the vote, thereby winning fourteen seats in the Land
parliament, compared with 1992, when it gained 10.9 per cent (fifteen
seats). On the same day the REP was also able to increase its share of the
vote in the Land parliamentary elections in Rhineland-Palatinate
to 3.5 per cent (2 per cent in 1991), which fell short of the 5 per cent
minimum needed to win representation (see opinion polls). The REP had less
success in the March municipal elections in Bavaria, the party's traditional
stronghold, when it received a mere 1.8 per cent of votes (compared with
5.3 per cent in 1990).
The Deutsche Volksunion (DVU, German People's Union) was founded in 1971
in Munich as an umbrella group by Gerhard Frey, a millionaire publisher
who heads and funds the party. The party advocates the expulsion of foreigners
to solve Germany's economic and housing crises. Antisemitic themes in its
papers, which include the Deutsche National Zeitung and Deutsche Wochen
Zeitung (weeklies with estimated circulations of 80,000-130,000 and
32,000-60,000 respectively), are prominent. The papers publish articles
of Holo-caust denial and show relentless hostility to the German Jewish
population. The organization is experiencing a fall in membership, which
was estimated at 20,000 in 1995 and 15,000 in 1996. The DVU decreased its
share of the vote to 4.3 per cent (6.3 per cent in 1993) at the Land parliamentary
elections in Schleswig-Holstein and is no longer representated in the
Land parliament.
Apart from its annual rally in Passau the DVU held few public activities
in 1996. In October, there was widespread criticism of the party in the
press, when the DVU Bremen division was ordered to return a sum of DM322,000
of parliamentary party money it had misused. The allegations stated the
money had been indirectly siphoned to party funds through the placing of
advertisements in the Munich Nationalzeitung , and had gone towards
funding extremist factions through the bulk buying of office equipment.
The oldest far-right party in Germany is the 4,000-strong Nationaldemokratische
Partei Deutschlands (NPD, German National Democratic Party). Founded in
1964 to unite the fragmented right, it claims adherence to the constitution,
although, like the REP, it is classified as a far-right organization by
the BfV, and is therefore subject to federal monitoring.
In October, the NPD re-elected Udo Voigt as its chairman. The long-standing
party boss, Günter Deckert, was elected as deputy leader. In October
1995, Deckert was ousted from office following accusations of financial
mismanagement of party funds. He is currently serving a two-year prison
sentence for incitement of racial hatred and Holocaust denial. The focus
of the NPD is at the local level, where it co-ordinates existing far-right
activism and runs campaigns, for example, against the building of mosques
and "foreign drug dealers". The group sees itself as the last
upholder of National Socialism in the midst of a European far right that
has become mainstream. During the year Voigt became the subject of an investigation
in Bayreuth (see legal matters).
Of particular importance is the NPD's youth organization, Die Jungen Nationaldemokraten
(Young National Democrats), the only far-right youth organization operating
nationwide. At a time of a decrease in far-right party membership, the Young
National Democrats seek to integrate neo-Nazis whose organizations have
been outlawed in the last few years.
Illegal extra-parliamentary organizations include: the Freiheitliche Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei (FAP, German Workers' Freedom Party), banned in 1995; the
Deutsche Alternative (DA, German Alternative), banned in 1992; and the Hamburg-based
Nationale Liste (NL, National List), also banned in 1995. These groups have
found it increasingly difficult to function in any way, although they try
to keep one-time members interested with irregular news-sheets and occasional
meetings. Many members have become involved in legal and formally less radical
far-right organizations.
In spring 1996, one such legal organization, the Deutsche Liga für
Volk und Heimat (DLVH, German League for the People and Homeland), which
was originally a splinter group of the REP, announced a change in structure-from
a political party to a society. This move was met with resistance from the
neo-Nazis within its ranks, who had found legal and "respectable"
cover in the DLVH without its ideology being too different from that of
their banned organizations. The DLVH leadership announced that the move
would make the society a natural um-brella organization of German "nationalists".
Another method of combating legal bans on parties is to replace illegal
organizations with new neo-Nazi groups founded at local level, with new
names and new publications. Two such examples are the Kameradschaft Recklinghausen
(see below) and the Sauerländer Aktionsfront. Their presence in the
public realm is controlled by the police, but their internal activities
indicate that they intend to survive this period of highly restricted political
activity. The neo-Nazi literature and weapons found in raids show the degree
of fan-aticism of these groups.
Police broke up numerous skinhead and neo-Nazi meetings throughout the year.
In February, for example, police raided the premises of the apparent successor
organization to the outlawed FAP. Twenty-two people associated with the
organization, the Kameradschaft Recklinghausen, were arrested. Neo-Nazi
publications and memorabilia were seized from the organization, the existence
of which had come to police attention one month earlier.
In April, police clashed with neo-Nazi groups that marched to celebrate
the anniversary of Hitler's birthday. Fifteen people were arrested in towns
such as Brandenburg.
Another police operation aimed at stifling neo-Nazi activities took place
a fortnight before the anniversary of the death of Rudolf Hess. Far-right
groups applied to hold over 100 marches on 17 August, the ninth anniversary
of Hess's suicide in Spandau prison. Some 400 neo-Nazis were taken into
protective custody before the date as a precautionary measure. Despite the
fact that many of the proposed marches and meetings were declared illegal,
they still took place. Police broke up neo-Nazi meetings in Lower Saxony
and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, arresting 51 people, and in Worms an unexpected
parade with about 400 participants took place. The marchers carried Nazi
flags, emblems and stickers. It was only after the gathering broke up that
the police arrested 180 people. Following local criticism, the interior
minister of Rhineland-Palatinate admitted that it had been a mistake to
allow the march to go ahead and that the police should have prevented it
from continuing. Several hundred police were alerted when the parade began
and were present during the proceedings, as were counter-demonstrators.
In a circular to German embassies in the republics of the former Soviet Union, the foreign office warned of the consequences of unlim-ited immigration of Jews to Germany. It claimed that over 100,000 persons had applied for immigration and another few hundred thousand were planning to do so. Following a claim by the minister for economic co-operation and development, Carl-Dieter Spranger (CSU), that 800,000 Jews were willing to emigrate to Germany and would cause the German pension system to collapse, the German Jewish leader, Ignatz Bubis, accused him of "panic-mongering", especially since the immigrants would not automatically have the right to draw pensions in Germany. Among others, the spokesperson for the Alliance 90/Greens called on Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel to distance himself from the "anti-Jewish claims" coming from his department, which he did in due course.
According to the BfV, there were 846 antisemitic criminal offences recorded
in 1996. This is a reduction from the previous year, in which the BKA registered
1,155 cases. The antisemitic offences make up 10 per cent of the total number
of 8,730 far-right crimes in the year (2,232 of which were committed against
foreigners and 5,652 of which fell under the miscellaneous category of "right-extremist
criminal acts").
As in the previous two years there were no recorded murders with an antisemitic
motive. However, there were ten incidents of bodily harm (nine in 1995).
There were 174 cases of circulation of antisemitic material and grafitti,
and 45 cases of damage to Jewish property. Other offences noted included
hate campaigns, vandalism, insults and threats-for example, a bomb threat
against the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
From April onwards, when Daniel Goldhagen's book Ordinary Germans:
Hitler's Willing Executioners was published, until the end of September,
when the author had completed a series of public lectures in Germany, a
great deal of media attention was given to a discussion of Godhagen's explanation
of German antisemitism and the population's role in the murder of European
Jews. The extraordinary response can be compared only with the success of
the movies Holocaust (a television mini-series from the 1970s) and
Schindler's List. By the end of the year more than 140,000 copies
of the book had been sold in Germany alone.While many public figures and
historians took part in the debate, politicians remained silent.
In September, Gräfin Dönhoff, the editor of the daily newspaper
Die Zeit , registered her concern over the possibility of an increase
in antisemitism, following the "accusations" of the collective
guilt of German society implicit in Goldhagen's book. In reaction to this,
in the Süddeutsche Zeitung , the writer Chaim Schneider countered,
should the Jewish people "again be made to feel responsible [for antisemitism]"?
A critical book by the literary editor Karl Corino, Aussen Marmor, innen
Gips: Die Legende des Stephan Hermlin (Exterior Marble, Interior Plaster:
The Legend of Stephan Hermlin), about the Jewish poet who had played a prominent
role in the cultural and educational policy of the GDR, provoked vehement
counter-attacks. Corino's intimation that elements of Hermlin's biography
had been fabricated (among them the claim of having been detained in the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp) brought accusations of anti-semitism against
Corino. Corino countered these claims in a lengthy interview in Der Spiegel
in November, and it was generally asserted that his book was well informed
and thoroughly researched.
In September, at a Germany vs. Poland football match in the southern Polish
town of Zabrze, German hooligans held up banners with antisemitic and anti-Polish
slogans: "Welcome to the Schindler-Jews" and "We are in Poland
to belt the Jews". Although such banners would be illegal in Germany,
but are not in Poland, German police used the video recordings to investigate
those responsible.
The issue of property restitution for Jewish victims of the Nazis remained complex in 1996. Judicial conflicts regularly provoke anti-Jewish sentiments among current property owners, residents and tenants.
A lecturer in politics and social science at the University of Munich
was stripped of his lectureship following an internal enquiry into his political
beliefs. Erwin Adler suggested in lectures that he was unsure whether the
gassing of Jews had ever taken place. His interpretation of the Nazi era
came to light when one of his students handed a recording of his lectures
to the local newspaper, München Abend Zeitung. In what seems
to be derived from the arguments of the Holocaust-denying historian Ernst
Nolte, Adler also said that the concentration camps were invented by Stalin
and not Hitler. He further suggested that Poland should share responsibilty
for the outbreak of the Second World War because of its "westward expansionist
ideals". Adler's remarks do not contravene the law forbidding denial
of the Holocaust.
According to a study by Der Spiegel magazine into trends of political
persuasion in German universities, more than fifty professors at German
universities were found to have far-right sympathies. A further study by
Frankfurt's Sociology Institute conducted in 1995 and published in September
1996 highlighted a trend among students "who feel that they can at
least say things that they would earlier never have dared". It found
that as many as 15 per cent of students in the state of Hesse had "right-wing
authoritarian views", as a result of which "they rejected foreigners
and believed in a reconstruction of the nation state and strong political
leadership".
Within esoteric and New Age trends, antisemitism occurs in the context
of conspiracy theories and "Germanic declarations of faith". The
author of the best-seller Geheimgesell-schaften und ihre Macht im 20.
Jahrhundert (Secret Societies and Their Power in the 20th Century),
Jan van Hesling (a pseudonym for Jan Udo Holey), and his publisher, Klaus-Dieter
Ewert, were charged with incitement of the people in December. The book,
over 700 pages long and in two volumes, is said to have sold 100,000 copies,
primarily at New Age fairs and bookshops. The author claims that world events
are determined by a secret supra-national council composed of politicians
and "Jewish bankers", whose aim is to rule the world. The book
suggests that it is not illogical, in the light of these facts, that Germany
should seek "to rid itself of its Jews". The distribution of the
book is now prohibited (see also Switzerland).
In April, the far-right publishing house FZ-Verlag (Frey-Imperium) published
an "antisemitic handbook", Wer ist Wer im Juden-tum (Who's
Who in Judaism). The book contains "biographical" entries on Jewish
figures such as Freud and Einstein. The entry on Freud claims that he was
a cocaine addict and pornographer whose work was a "possibility for
a Jew to earn money", and that Einstein was a sick and paranoid hater
of Germans.
Dieter Stein, the editor of the sole national far-right paper, Junge
Freiheit (Young Freedom), attempted to steer a moderate course in 1996.
Perhaps because of this decision the paper lost many of its readers and
faces acute financial problems.
In June, the neo-Nazi Manfred Roeder published a one-page advertisement
entitled "95 Thesen zum Lutherjahr" (95 Theses for Luther's Anniversary)
in the Kassel regional newspaper Hessisch-Niedersächsische Allgemeine.
The advert claimed that for fifty years the German people had been declared
guilty of "one-off crimes" by "Jewish personalities"
and had been forced into "spiritual submission". Following protests
by the churches, unions and political parties, the editorial office distanced
itself from the advertisement.
In Germany, as well as internationally, the Internet plays a role in the
distribution of racist views and the co-ordination of far-right activities.
According to a report by the interior ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia,
published in August 1996, the supply of racist material in the German language
is increasing dramatically. For example, the far-right party NPD and its
youth organization, Young National Democrats, each have German-language
home pages. Other German sites that post neo-Nazi and far-right material
are the Nationaler In-formationsdienst Deutschland (National Information
Service Germany) and the Thule Netz, which comprises a dozen neo-Nazi mailboxes.
On this site, the most hard-core informa-tion is available only to those
who know the "key" that is required to obtain access. Given the
difficulties in monitoring such activity, the interior ministry proposed
posting counter-material and creating a ministry educational site.
In January, the public prosecutor's office of Baden-Württemberg ordered
the T-Online commercial service (a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom) to prohibit
access to the site operated by the Canada-based neo-Nazi and Holocaust-denier
Ernst Zundel (see Canada). The action was taken after prosecutors stated
they were considering incitement charges for allegedly facilitating the
distribution of neo-Nazi propaganda on the Internet. The closure of the
site sparked a debate on free speech in the country.
In 1996 rabbis and Jewish community spokespersons protested against missionary
activities aimed at Jews. Groups from the Free Church target, in particular,
Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and, partly under the pretext
of assisting them with social integration, try to win them over to Christianity.
They apply the subtle use of Russian writings, which at first glance are
not recognizable as Christian tracts, to support the missionary's aims.
During a panel discussion of the Inter-national Council of Christians and
Jews in Mainz in July, a leading Catholic (Bishop Karl Lehmann) and Protestant
(the church pres-ident of Palatinate, Werner Schramm) noted that even though
the theological élite would seek dialogue with the Jews, this theological
self-criticism would not penetrate to the grassroots of the church.
In October, the German Jewish community accused the Scientology organization
of insulting Germany and the victims of the Nazis in an advertisement in
the New York Times . Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council
of Jews in Germany, said the advertisement, which compared Germany's treatment
of Scientologists today with the Nazi persecution of Jews and included an
imperial eagle and swastika, was "an insult to victims of the Holocaust".
Successful prosecution of Holocaust-deniers in Germany has contributed
to the fact that there were no high-profile cases of Holocaust denial in
1996. Material denying the Holocaust is increasingly imported from abroad.
In 1996, Deutschland-Report and National Journal were circulated:
both are published in England. Wiking Productions publications-from Stockholm-and
publications by mail order from NS.88 in Denmark (see Denmark) were also
available.
On 17 May, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an advertisement
with the headline "Appeal of the Hundred-Freedom of opinion is in danger!"
A group of scientists, writers and editors publicized their concern about
special legislation and criminal prosecutions regarding certain interpretations
of contentious issues of modern history. The advertisement opposed strengthened
legislation against incitement of the people (Auschwitz-Lüge) as a
perversion of justice and violation of human rights. The appeal attracted
little public response.
In 1996, a rise in the influence of Turkish nationalists was observed among Turks living in Germany. One suggestion for this political radicalization is the high rate of unemployment among Turks in Germany, especially the young (18.1 per cent). The Islamic group Milli Görüs (National World View) publishes a daily paper, Milli Gazete , which included articles expressing anti-Zionist and Jewish conspiracy theories. One article in July suggested that the G7 states are an instrument of Zionism whose aim is to subjugate the whole of humanity to the rule of the Jews and to attempt to build an Israeli empire. It claims that the immediate goal is to prevent Turkish-Iranian communication.
Questions concerning German-Jewish relations were included in the prestigious
annual ALLBUS study (Allgemeine Bevölkerungs-umfrage der Sozialwissenschaften-General
Opinion Poll of the Social Sciences) for the first time in 1996, marking
an increase in their perceived importance for sociology and politics. Questions
relating to German attitudes to foreigners and "guest-workers"
have been included in the study since 1980. The results of the study have
not yet been released.
The results of a study carried out among fourteen- to twenty-one-year-olds
indicate the difference in attitude towards Jews of German youths from the
east (Brandenburg) and from the west (North Rhine-Westphalia). The study,
which was carried out by the Institute for Youth Research and the Moses
Mendelssohn Centre of the University of Potsdam during August and September
1996, is indicative of attitudes in the whole of Germany.
Although the results have not yet been released, preliminary analysis suggests
the following trends. Two-thirds of west German students have knowledge
of the Nazi persecution of Jews, as opposed to only half of east German
students. The Jewish religion and culture were hardly taught in the GDR,
with the consequence that, here too, only 23 per cent of students claim
any knowledge, as opposed to 39 per cent of west German students. East German
students mostly do not appreciate their lack of knowledge; only one-third
have any interest in the history and culture of the Jews. In west Germany
63 per cent of students express at least a desire for information.
This east-west differentiation also holds true where prejudices are concerned:
in Brandenburg, 30 per cent hold anti-Jewish prejudices, as opposed to only
12 per cent in North Rhine-Westphalia. When asked whether antisemitic incidents
such as the desecration of Jewish cemeteries were acceptable, 10.6 per cent
of youths from Brandenburg claimed they understood the motivation behind
such incidents, while this was true only for 4.5 per cent of youths from
North Rhine-Westphalia.
Variable factors include gender differences-girls are more knowledgeable
and less prejudiced-and differences between types of schools-grammar school
students are better informed and more tolerant than secondary modern school
students. Students from vocational schools present a special problem since
they are often targeted for recruitment by rac-ist and neo-Nazi organizations.
The study substantiates the unusual position of east German youth, which
compares negatively with that of adults from the former GDR, where antisemitic
sentiments can only rarely be found, as well as with that of their contemporaries
in the west. East German youth in its developmental phase, where political
attitudes are normally formed, is reacting in a particularly authoritarian
way towards the deep crisis of adapting to the west German capitalist way
of life and working conditions. In addition, the east German federal states
still lack the educational effectiveness of liberal democratic cultures
that developed in west Germany in the decades following the Second World
War.
The weekly Die Woche commissioned the Forsa-Institute to conduct
an opinion poll in January about the relationship of Germans to Jews, on
the occasion of the introduction of the "Remembrance Day of Victims
of National Socialism". The poll showed that government publicity for
the institution of the day of commemoration was unsatisfactory. A total
of 78 per cent of Germans polled were ignorant of the fact that the commemoration
day was held on the same day as the liberation of Auschwitz. However, two-thirds
of those questioned felt a day of commemoration was meaningful. The vast
majority of respondents viewed the German-Jewish relationship as comparable
to elsewhere and as having become normalized. For example, 75 per cent stated
they would elect a Jewish politician as a member of parliament, and 68 per
cent denied a special guilt or obligation towards the Jews or Israel. However,
this denial does not necessarily mean that a clean break should be made
with the past; only 43 per cent were in favour of that.
Following the March parliamentary elections in three Länder ,
it was revealed that the Allensbach Institute of Opinion Research-analysts
of antisemitism in Germany since 1949-had deliberately published low figures
for the far-right REP's support in Rhineland-Palatinate (for election results,
see parties, organizations, movements), putting it at 4.5 per cent, short
of the critical 5 per cent threshold for winning representation. The institute
believed it would have been "irresponsible" to release a higher
figure that might have contributed to a "bandwagon" effect in
the party's favour. The 4.5 per cent figure was "raw data" from
polling samples, as opposed to the "weighted" figure that is usually
released.
In December, the German government approved a draft law to ban the distribution
or publication of neo-Nazi material (and porno-graphy) on the Internet.
The law, known as the "multi-media law", will make Internet servers
responsible for the sites they provide.
Many leading neo-Nazis, criminals and Holocaust-deniers were given prison
sentences or fined in a number of court cases during 1996.
The state prosecutors' office in Bayreuth instigated investigations into
the affairs of the party chairman of the NPD, Udo Voigt, to ascertain whether
he was guilty of dispar-agement of the state and its national symbols (see
parties, organizations, movements). In a speech Voigt gave in Kulmbach he
allegedly referred to Germany as a "land of persecution" employing
"police state" methods and of trying to prevent his struggle for
a better system. If found guilty Voigt could face up to five years' imprisonment.
Voigt is a former captain in the German army.
The trial of fourteen neo-Nazis aged between twenty-one and sixty-six years,
for perpetuating the outlawed DA under a new name, Deutsche Nationalisten
(DN), continued in Koblenz in 1996. The DN was formed seven months after
the banning of the DA. The case highlights the difficulties that exist in
enforcing legislation against neo-Nazis.
In Lübeck, a twenty-eight-year-old man was charged with an arson attack
on a synagogue on 7 May 1995. The public prosecutor did not see a political
motive in the attack because the accused was psychologically disturbed,
illiterate and had committed this and other arson attacks for sexual gratification.
The court also questioned whether or not he had committed the crime. The
proceedings have not yet been concluded.
The Spanish court of justice has rejected the application by the German
judiciary to extradite Otto-Ernst Remer. It ruled that the offence of incitement
of the people did not exist in Spanish law. Remer had fled to Spain in 1994
in order to avoid imprisonment in Germany, having been convicted on a 1993
charge relating to denial of the Holocaust.
In January, Christian Wendt, the editor of the Berlin Brandenburger Zeitung
and a member of the far-right party Der Nationalen, was sentenced to
seven months' imprisonment for slander. He published an article in the newspaper
that referred to the Brandenburg minister of interior as "Verbotsminister"
(prohibiting minister). Der Nationalen's chairman, Frank Schwerdt, and others
were also charged with incitement to racial hatred.
The trial of a German American opened in January. Hans Schmidt, a former
Hitler Youth organizer, was accused of inciting racial hatred by sending
hate mail from the USA and Germany to Jewish leaders and government officials
in Germany. He was arrested after arriving in Frankfurt from the USA, where
he had been living since 1949.
Also in January, the trial of thirty-seven-year old Jürgen Jost (Joschi)
came to an end. Jost, a systems operator for the neo-Nazi Thule Netz, was
fined DM2,700 and given a three-month suspended prison sentence for incitement.
He was responsible for the publication of the antisemitic tract Zentralrat
der Neanderthaler (Central Council of the Neanderthals) on Thule Netz.
In February, Franz Schönhuber, the former leader and founder of the
REP (see parties, organizations, movements), was found not guilty by Karlsruhe
district court of slander against the interior minister of Baden-Württemberg.
He had allegedly called the minister a "red-painted Nazi" and
"shabby subject". The plaintiff in this second round of proceedings
was the prosecuting attorney's office, which appealed against a court ruling
of December 1995 that had also ruled Schön-huber not guilty of slander.
The court found that Schönhuber was exercising his right to free speech.
In May, four more members of the former NF (see below) were sentenced in
Braunschweig for incitement and grevious bodily harm. The main defendant
was sentenced to four years' imprisonment; the others received one year's
probation and were fined between DM1,100 and DM2,400.
Udo Walendy, the publisher of Historische Tatsachen , was sentenced
to fifteen months' imprisonment in May under the incitement laws. In June,
another publisher of Holocaust-denial material, George Albert Bosse, was
given one year's probation and fined DM4,000 in connection with items published
in his Recht und Wahrheit periodical.
Another publisher, Wigbert Grabert from Tübingen, of the Grabert Verlag,
was fined DM30,000 for the publication of Grundlagen der Zeitgeschichte
(Foundations of Contemporary History), edited by Ernst Gauss (a pseudonym
of Germar Rudolf, the author of the Rudolf Expertise ) in June 1996.
In July, the federal criminal court upheld the 1995 conviction of Bela Ewald
Althans. Amid much media attention, Althans-the "star" of the
1993 documentary film Beruf: Neonazi (Profession: Neo-Nazi), released
in English as The Portrait -had been sentenced by a Berlin court
to three-and-a-half years in prison for inciting racial hatred and denying
the Holocaust.
In 1992 the interior ministry applied to the federal constitutional court
to revoke the right to stand for election of the convicted neo-Nazis Thomas
Dienel and Heinz Reisz. In July the court decided that the two could not
be deprived of this right, as they had been given only suspended prison
sentences for their original conviction for inciting racial hatred and,
therefore, did not pose a threat to democracy.
In relation to another offence, Dienel's prison sentence was extended by
a court in Erfurt to three years and three months, in August, when he was
found guilty of disturbing the peace.
In August, the trial of the US-based neo-Nazi Gary Lauck (see United States
of America), charged with incitement to racial hatred, was held in Hamburg.
Lauck was arrested on an international warrant when he attended a neo-Nazi
convention in Denmark in March 1995 and was extradited to Germany in September
of that year on the basis of a little-used Danish law that bans racist statements.
He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for inciting racial hatred
and distributing neo-Nazi material deemed unconstitutional in Germany. Far-right
groups in Germany shied away from public support for Lauck while he was
on trial, and politicians of all parties welcomed the verdict. As his time
spent in custody since his arrest will be deducted from his sentence, it
is unlikely that Lauck will serve more than two-and-a-half years. The presiding
judge, Günter Bertram, characterized Lauck as obsessed with Nazism,
and quoted from one of his news-letters, in which he referred to Jews as
"sub-humans" and "rats", the Holocaust was de- scribed
as a myth and Hitler as one of "the greatest of all leaders".
Lauck's extradition, trial and conviction are seen as setting international
legal precedents. The defence has lodged an appeal against the verdict.
Meinolf Schönborn, the former leader of the illegal organization Nationalistische
Front (NF), which was banned in the early 1990s, was sentenced to two years
and three months' imprisonment in November for the perpetuation of an illegal
organization. He was refused the right of appeal.
The former party chairperson of the NPD, Günter Deckert, was repeatedly
charged with insult during the year and in November was given seven months'
probation for calling on a Jewish CDU politician and member of the Central
Council of the Jews, Michel Friedman, to "go to Israel".
In November, it was decided that the Zentrale Stelle zur Erforschung nationalsozialistischer
Gewaltverbrechen (Investigation Centre for National Socialist War Crimes)
in Ludwigsburg would stay open as long as there were cases to be prosecuted.
The centre catalogues documents about Nazi crimes, tracks down suspects
and passes on the cases to the relevant local prosecutors. This decision
follows discussions about the future of the Ludwigsburg centre that took
place as a result of pressures on federal budgets, the centre being financed
by contributions from all sixteen federal states, and was also due to a
reduction in the number of cases being brought to trial. The justice ministers
of all federal states decided that the centre would stay open as long "as
there is even one file still open", which was estimated to be the case
for about another ten years. The archives will also remain open to media
and other researchers. In addition, it was decided to make an institute
for contemporary history out of the centre once all its files have been
closed.
In August 1996, Germany requested that Italy extradite the former SS officers
Erich Priebke and Karl Hess to stand trial in Germany for war crimes. The
prospects for a successful extradition and fresh trial were unclear because
of legal and judicial loopholes surrounding the extradition request, one
of which is Argentina's condition-the country in which Priebke lived for
fifty years and which agreed to extradition to Italy-that Priebke should
not be extradited to a third country. On 1 August an Italian tribunal found
Priebke guilty of involvement in the 1944 massacre of 335 men and boys,
and convicted him on two counts of murder and of helping to organize the
massacre.
The tribunal rejected Priebke's defence that he would have risked death
by refusing to obey orders, and that the massacre was a legitimate reprisal.
However, the tribunal ruled that aggravating factors, such as premeditation
and cruelty, did not apply to Priebke's role in the massacre, thus making
the crime subject to a thirty-year statute of limitations (see Italy). The
president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Ignatz Bubis, called
the Italian ruling a "slap in the face for victims and survivors".
Priebke, wanted in Germany on two counts of murder, was rearrested hours
after the military tribunal in Italy had released him, and was being held
in a central Rome prison. Some experts feared the German request could interfere
with the appeals procedure in Italy and help Priebke to be acquitted.
In April, seventy-six-year-old Hermine Ryan, a former guard at Majdanek
concentration camp, was released from prison as a result of ill health.
She spent a total of twenty years of a life sentence in prison, having been
convicted of murder. A spokesperson for the North Rhine-Westphalia justice
ministry said that her release was not a pardon for her crime. Some 200,000
people, including at least 70,000 Jews, died at Majdanek.
In July the federal constitutional court amended the 1953 London accords,
which established the basis on which post-war German reparations would be
made to victims of the Third Reich. The right to individual compensation
was extended to prisoners forced to work in an ammunitions factory near
Auschwitz in 1943-5. Later that month, the government agreed to pay DM2
million to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in compensation for atrocities
committed during the Nazi occupation of these countries.
On 3 January, Federal President Roman Herzog declared 27 January to be
"Remembrance Day of the Victims of National Socialism". However,
Herzog himself was unable to preside over the commemorations on this date
as he had to make a previously planned visit to Africa. The official federal
parliament commemoration was brought forward to 19 January. Observers interpreted
this "pragmatic" treatment of the date as damaging to its symbolic
character.
In February 1996, Ingo Hasselbach, founder and one-time leader of the east
German neo-Nazi group National Alternative, published an English-language
version of his autobiographical account of life as a neo-Nazi, Führer
-Ex. Hasselbach, who has been on the run since his change of political
allegiance in 1993, acted as an informant about German neo-Nazi groups,
and was a prosecution witness in the trial of Gary Lauck (see legal matters).
The president of the German parliament, Rita Süssmuth, took over the
chair of the newly founded German branch of the Inter-parliamentary Council
Against Antisemitism (IpCA).
In 1996, sixteen Austrian and German cities hosted the exhibition Vernichtungskrieg-Verbrechen
der Wehrmacht 1941-1944 (War of Extermination-Crimes of the Wehrmacht
1941-1944). It had an estimated 130,000 visitors. The exhibition, the result
of one year's research conducted at the Institute for Social Research in
Hamburg, illustrates the crimes committed by the Wehrmacht during the Second
World War. Veterans, nationalists and members of the far right protested
against the exhibition. Futile attempts to halt the exhibition by far-right
activists included scribbling the word "lie" and the Star of David
on the photographs and charts. Protesters refused to accept any critical
discussion of the role of the Wehrmacht during the war and claimed the exhibition
was a "Jewish smear campaign". Several right-wing local governments
have refused to co-finance the exhibition in 1997 (see Austria).
Following the design competition for the Berlin Holocaust memorial, a controversy
about the quality and form of the designs erupted in January 1995, and has
still not been resolved. Numerous critical comments on the artistic design
of the memorial and its planned site were voiced in 1996. Many demanded
the reopening of the competition. The commission responsible responded to
the pressure by scheduling a series of expert hearings for early 1997 in
order to reach a final decision. Construction is planned for 1998, and the
unveiling for the beginning of 1999.
The decline in far-right crimes recorded in 1993, especially bodily harm
and arson, continued in 1996. This trend also holds true for public antisemitic
activities and incidents, the number of which continued to fall. Despite
the relatively low number of serious crimes, daily violence and discrimination
against foreigners and foreign workers, tourists, left-wingers, the homeless
and asylum-seekers continued. Some Germans treat the violence with indifference,
and some local authorities often ignore it. This creates a hiatus between
the social and political élite and its declaration against racism
and antisemitism on the one hand, and local politics on the other. The reduction
in the number of youth projects and preventative measures, for financial
reasons, is counterproductive in this situation. While extremist parties
and neo-Nazi groups have, in recent years, lost some of their presence,
they still attempt to develop new political strategies, which increasingly
attempt to capitalize on problems such as unemployment and the fear of social
decline.
© JPR 1997