Neo-Nazis on a Shopping Spree

For years, the far-right NPD has been eager to buy land in Germany. The party will soon open a schooling center for young right-wingers in Gonzerath, a village near Trier. But are deals in Dresden and Bavaria a real-estate scam?

The sophisticated cuisine Heinrich Schöpf offered his guests in the Jägerstüberl inn, in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, was a grand success. The renowned chef was even picked out by the authors of the Michelin guide for specialties, said to combine "homeliness" with "cosmopolitanism."

But the gourmet attraction has been closed since the start of the year, just like the Waldlust mountain inn next door -- for economic reasons, people say. A "hint of Asia," a "dash of the Orient," a "Mediterranean touch" -- that's all gone now. The NPD, Germany's largest far-right party, is moving in.

The little town is a symbolic place for the German far right; Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, lies buried there. Now it seems a top-level NPD functionary named Thomas Wulff plans to open a "Rudolf Hess Memorial and Documentation Center" in the building complex. There's also talk of a "national schooling and education center" -- and of using the complex as a campaign headquarters for the NPD during next year's Bavarian regional elections.

Wulff is the right-hand man of the NPD's leader, Udo Voigt. He's also a middleman between the party and the unorganized and sometimes violent neo-Nazi groups called Freie Kameradschaften ("Free Associations"). Jürgen Rieger -- a Hamburg-based neo-Nazi known for nationwide real estate activities -- has been presented with a sales offer by the property owner, according to the NPD's Bavarian spokesman, Günter Kursawe, who added that negotiations were underway. Rieger is notorious for co-organizing the so-called "Rudolf Hess Memorial Marches," which have now been banned for two years. Several thousand right-wing radicals from all over Europe participated in the march when it was last held in 2004.

People in the city are worried, all the more so because one right-winger has been sleeping in the house during the past few days -- "to guard it," as the NPD says. The old inn is located in the middle of the woods, just a few hundred meters away from the natural stage of the Luisenburg Festival, which draws more than 100,000 theatergoers every summer.

Mayor Karl-Willi Beck from the conservative Christian Social Party (CSU) now has reason to worry that tourists might pass a national neo-Nazi office when they attend the festival. But he says the city has secured a license to sell the property and is itself negotiating with the proprietor. It remains unclear "to what extent this is simply a question of putting financial pressure on the city," Beck told center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Nazis on the tennis court?

A possible far-right real estate purchase is also being discussed in Dresden. Rumors the NPD may want to buy a long-defunct tennis hall in the Pappritz neighborhood have been circulating for months. The NPD's party organ Deutsche Stimme already held a so-called "press festival" in the sports hall last August; thousands of members of the far-right scene showed up.

Now Uwe Meenen, an NPD functionary from Lower Franconia, is said to have purchased the sports hall. The party's federal spokesman Klaus Beier says the sales contract was signed at a notary's office on Jan. 30 and the change of owner now merely needs to be registered in the cadaster. Beier called the sales price of €3.25 million ($4.26 million) -- reported by Germany's mass-market daily Bild -- "realistic." The NPD will hold party congresses and other major events there in the future, he says. They may even play tennis.

Saxony's conservative (CDU) governor, Georg Milbradt, lives a few hundred meters from the tennis hall. He acts relaxed about his potential new neighbors. "One shouldn't allow oneself to be blackmailed by the NPD," he said, according to Bild. "And if they want to play tennis in Pappritz, that's politically harmless."

What does he mean by blackmail? As in Wunsiedel, it's not out of the question that the threat of neo-Nazis on the tennis court is just a ploy to drive up the price of an unpopular piece of real estate. It wouldn't be the first time that NPD functionary Meenen presented himself as a far-right investor to help Wolfgang Jürgens, the proprietor, pocket a princely sum.

In spring 2005, Meenen said he was planning a "National Center" in Grafenwöhr, in Germany's Upper Palatinate region. Here too, the piece of real estate in question was a sports hall with a tennis court. Alarmed, the city made use of its license to sell and took over the building for €545,000 ($714,000). That was the price Meenen had previously negotiated.

The city administration complained about "a form of blackmail" and shelled out major sums for renovating and restructuring the building while the former proprietor laughed all the way to the bank. "I should have asked for €100,000 ($131,000) more," Jürgens sneered, openly calling the far-right purchasing offer "a pretty good pressuring device."

Neo-Nazis schooling center in Hunrücksdorf

In the Rhineland area of Hunsrück, on the other hand, the NPD's real-estate shopping spree is more tangible. The party has rented rooms in a former primary school in Gonzerath, a small town near Trier, and the state branch of the NPD wants to open its "Schinderhannes Center" there in early March.

The party held a congress there in December. The first schooling session for "functionaries, activists and (potential) candidates" took place in January, and the plan is to continue holding such sessions at the school grounds on every third Saturday of the month. The local NPD branch has announced on its Web site that the sessions will instruct people in the "foundations of national politics," and that this will involve defining concepts such as "race," "people," "nation" and "state" -- as well as explaining "the view of humans appropriate to life," and the NPD's political platform.

Dietmar Thömmes, Gonzerath's head official, is horrified by the prospect of a far-right schooling center in the town. The CDU politician says he and others feel helpless at the moment, but haven't given up the fight.

The property owner's decision to rent to the NPD in the first place goes back to an argument with the local administration, according to Thömmes. He says the town clerk's office took the man's snappish dog away -- prompting him to announce to the administration that he would present them with a "nice surprise."

Spiegel Online