Neo-Nazi boss to appeal to top court for hotel ban

Udo Voigt, chairman of the far-right National Democratic Party, is preparing to appeal to the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe, after he was allegedly barred from a hotel for his political views.

Voigt's wife booked four days in the Hotel Esplanade in the eastern German spa town of Bad Saarow in December 2009, but the hotel refused to accept the booking, saying that Voigt's "political beliefs" meant that the hotel could not fulfil its aim of "providing every single guest with an excellent wellness experience."

Voigt's legal complaints have been unsuccessful so far, and according to a report on news magazine Der Spiegel's website on Sunday, he is planning to appeal to the BGH next Friday.

His lawyer countered the hotel's decision by saying that other guests could be disturbed by the presence of "black Africans, Muslims and severely disabled people."

But, Voigt's lawyer said, "in a free democracy, our citizens are expected to show tolerance that some people might consider an imposition." Otherwise a democratic society cannot function, "because there would be too many moves towards discrimination, and at the end we have a fractured society without solidarity."

The hotel's lawyer argued that Voigt was demanding "tolerance that neither he nor the NPD extend to others."

The Local

'Nazi Leaks' And The NPD - Leak Of 60,000 Far-Right E-Mails Reveals Extremist Chaos

A massive leak of internal communications, dubbed "NaziLeaks," has embarrassed Germany's far-right NPD. The roughly 60,000 e-mails which have been obtained by SPIEGEL reveal blatant racism, internal strife and shady financial dealings within the party.

Udo Voigt, the chairman of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), had hoped that 2011 would see the radical right make an important step forward in Germany. On Jan. 1, a merger with its rival far-right party, the German People's Union (DVU), went into effect, thereby combining their numbers just in time for a year that will see parliamentary elections in seven of Germany's 16 federal states. In a New Year's speech, Voigt confidently told his supporters that 2011 would be a "small super-election year."

"State elections, municipal elections -- Germans will finally get a chance to punish those at the top," Voigt said, looking straight into the camera. "We have a chance. We have a program for the future."

Now, less than six weeks later, Voigt's cockiness has given way to disillusionment. For the second time since 2008, tens of thousands of internal party e-mails have been leaked. SPIEGEL, along with other publications, has been given access to more than 60,000 e-mail messages from the accounts of NPD politicians. The party has labeled the people behind the leaks "criminal suppliers." It remains unclear whether the digital information came from a disgruntled individual within the party's headquarters or was obtained by a hacker.

The e-mails lay bare the chaotic internal life of the far-right party. They testify to the problems encountered during the merger with the DVU, shady finances related to state election campaigns and internal wrangling that often degenerated into hateful words and insults toward other party members.

The e-mails also document blatant racism. One senior Bavarian NPD official writes about "Kanacken," a racist term of abuse directed against people of immigrant descent, while a well-known neo-Nazi from the southwestern city of Aschaffenburg reflects on the "National Socialist movement." One NPD official from Hamburg complains about another party member having a "Negress" as a Facebook friend.

Sensitive Details about the NPD-DVU Merger

Still, the most awkward details from the data leak regard Voigt's prestige project, the NPD's merger with its former rival, the DVU. They disclose that there was massive resistance to the move within the DVU. One DVU member wrote in an e-mail sent ahead of Dec. 12, the day of the party convention where the merger was voted on, that DVU chairman Matthias Faust would get to experience his own "Waterloo" -- in other words, a total defeat. In order to help the merger go through, one NPD official from the southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg offered the support of a "Kampfgruppe" (a term associated with the Nazi era, referring to a combat unit) from the city of Schwabisch Hall. The unit, the official wrote, could be transported in a rental van to the DVU convention, which was being held in Kirchheim, a small town in the eastern state of Thuringia. "Nine men cost €524 ($710)," he wrote. The fee included €45 for meals, he explained, "as an incentive."

However, it would appear that not all of the van's passengers would be eligible to vote. The NPD official asked Faust to supply him with a "back-dated DVU membership card and a back-dated invitation" for his girlfriend, who would be coming along. When approached by SPIEGEL, Faust denied having supplied a back-dated membership card or invitation. Talk of the "Kampfgruppe" could only have been "a joke," he added, saying that "absolutely no combat units were present" at the convention. What's more, he said, guests wouldn't have been allowed to vote.

A majority of people attending the Dec. 12 convention voted for the merger. Since then, the right-wing extremists have been calling their common party "NPD -- The People's Union." Still, the merger is far from being a done deal. After the vote was held, senior officials representing DVU associations in four states complained of voting improprieties, such as not having been given enough time to properly review and respond to certain documents in the run-up to the vote. In January, a state court in Munich sided with the complaining officials, declaring that the vote did not meet democratic requirements and that a new vote would have to be held before a merger agreement could be signed.

Money Problems and Inflated Ambitions

In addition to such legal troubles, the NPD continues to struggle with financial shortfalls. The NPD is hoping that it will clear the 5 percent hurdle in the March 20 election in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and secure seats in the state parliament. But, to support its campaign, the party has apparently been forced to meet its financial needs with the help of private loans.

According to one of the internal emails, the family of Udo Pastors, the deputy head of the NPD in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, extended a €25,000 loan to the Saxony-Anhalt campaign organization under his wife's name. Ironically, Pastors, an avowed critic of capitalism, is charging the Saxony-Anhalt brethren 3.5 percent interest on the loan and only appears to trust his notoriously cash-strapped party to a certain degree: As collateral for the loan, Pastors demanded a guarantee from the NPD's national organization, which had to be personally signed by the NPD's national leader Udo Voigt.

This, in turn, does not seem to have entirely conformed to Voigt's understanding of loyal camaraderie. In an e-mail to Matthias Heyder, the NPD's lead candidate in the Saxony-Anhalt state elections, Voigt grumbled that it was "a joke that, of all people, a man as well-off as Udo (Pastors) still wants a guarantee in this case." Pastors has confirmed the existence of the loan but refuses to provide any additional details. Voigt opted to not respond to questions regarding the loan.

The financial shortages also have something to do with the costly campaign in Saxony-Anhalt as well as with Heyder himself and his at times ambitious campaign plans. For example, although he is just a regional politician, Heyder wanted to have a "documentary" filmed about him in which he flies "from appointment to appointment" in an airplane and is welcomed upon arrival at airports. What's more, as Heyder wrote to the NPD's media relations officer, he wanted to have members of the press accompany him on his flights, who would get to see "real rallies" whenever he landed. The point of all these staged events would be to portray the NPD as a serious party -- despite the fact that recent polls put its support at a meager 3 percent -- and to help it secure the votes it needs to win seats in the state parliament. Heyder has also declined to respond to inquiries.

NPD Struggling to Mobilize Supporters

While the NPD in Saxony-Anhalt have their heads in the clouds, their colleagues in Baden-Wurttemberg are having a hard time mustering enough people on the ground. The NPD in the state is suffering from mobilization problems: The far-right party has to collect 150 valid signatures in each election district in order to be allowed to field their own candidates in the state parliamentary election on March 27.

In December, Janus Nowak, a local party official from the town of Boblingen, wrote an e-mail with "ALARM" in its subject line. In the e-mail, he reported that, despite months of trying, party members were "apparently incapable" of even "getting merely a single signature per day." In order to increase the yield, the NPD official provided the would-be signature-gatherers with detailed suggestions on how they "could address people on the street and be successful." For example, he suggested that every pitch should begin with the words: "Hello, I'm not trying to sell anything. No vacuum cleaners or washing machines or anything."

Once they had gotten that far, campaign workers were instructed to make sure "to look people in the eye," rather than looking at their clipboards, and to avoid saying anything too "complicated." The most important piece of advice regarded what came last: "Say 'Thank you' and don't talk too much." The idea of deploying professional signature collectors, such as an "NPD organizational wizard" from the town of Volklingen, was even considered. But the man in question appeared to lack selfless dedication to the party. Instead, as Nowak complained in an e-mail, he asked for "€1,000 a week" in addition to "meals + additional helpers + information kiosks + accommodation." Nowak also declined to comment on the e-mail exchanges.

'Capitalist' Scheme

Rudolf Schützinger, a member of the NPD's executive committee in Baden-Wurttemberg, also gave some thought to how to increase the number of signatures being collected. He suggested paying €1 to "each collector who turns in an acceptable, unauthenticated signature" and €2 for every authenticated signature.

Schutzinger also had another idea up his sleeve: attracting campaign donors with a sort of "profit-sharing" scheme. He suggested that, if the party succeeded in winning more than 1 percent of the vote, donors would get their "entire donation back within a set time frame + 30 percent." But, if the NPD could "not master" the 1 percent hurdle, donors would get back half of their contribution, while still being able to write the donation off against their taxes. In doing so, they would "have a loss of only 25%." According to Schutzinger, this scenario offered the advantage that the party would not have to assume any "financial risk," while at the same time motivating "the gamblers among our sympathizers" to make donations.

In an e-mail, the NPD official admitted that the scheme had "a capitalist aftertaste" and noted that it would need "legal validation" as far as party finance laws were concerned. In the end, the idea was apparently rejected. Schutzinger also chose not to respond to SPIEGEL's inquiries.

Threat of Legal Action

NPD spokesman Klaus Beier has threatened legal action in response to the publication of the emails. According to Beier, the "e-mail traffic between both party officials and party members, which used encryption technology (was) copied in breach of (Germany's) communication secrecy law" and that "the texts, whose content was probably manipulated" were "provided to the compliant journalists." On Saturday, the news agency DPA reported that the NPD had filed a criminal complaint over the publication of the e-mails.

In any case, Beier refused to say anything about who was behind the data leak or how it came about. He did say, however, that one had to assume that "the system has far-reaching means at its disposal for reading all of the NPD's e-mail communication."

Beier's remarks are reminiscent of the stance that the party took back in 2008, when SPIEGEL published an earlier collection of internal NPD e-mails.

Free Internet Press

Germany's major neo-Nazi party faces ruin after €2.2m fine

Germany's largest neo-Nazi party is facing financial ruin after the Bundestag imposed a €2.2 million fine yesterday for filing fraudulent accounts. Leaders of the National Democratic Party (NPD) vowed yesterday to launch a legal challenge to the fine, due for payment in a month.

“Of course we are going to challenge it,” said Peter Marx, NPD general secretary. The party has little choice: long-running financial difficulties have left the NPD almost bankrupt. Last year, the former treasurer was imprisoned for two years and eight months for embezzling €750,000 in party funds.

Yesterday’s fine arises from falsely declared assets and funds in its 2007 accounts, a Bundestag statement said.

Although the NPD has no MPs in the Bundestag, it has representatives in two state parliaments, qualifying it for public funding although the party questions Germany’s democratic order. A Bundestag committee that audits party accounts said it found significant irregularities in the NPD’s 2007 figures.

The total fine imposed was €2.5 million, but NPD officials had already agreed to the withholding of €300,000 in state funds due this year.

Starved of funds, the party has let go over half its staff members in the Berlin headquarters. The financial difficulties will frustrate party ambitions in a series of state elections later this year. Yesterday’s fine is likely to cause further divisions between the NPD’s so-called “modern” and “Hitlerite” camps at this weekend’s party conference in Berlin.

Since entering the Saxon state parliament in 2004, the “modern” wing has pushed for the party to concentrate on a far-right social conservatism. They argue that bomber jackets and swastika flags scare away potential voters frustrated with the mainstream political handling of the financial crisis, social welfare cuts and bank bailouts. But the “Hitlerite” wing, drawn from extreme-right groupings, accuses the “modern” politicians of pursuing their careers at the expense of the party’s neo-Nazi, racist and anti-Semitic principles.

Party leader Udo Voigt has his own problems: he faces a challenge to his leadership at the weekend party conference. Then, later this month, he is likely to be convicted of defamation and inciting racial hatred over a party pamphlet published during the 2006 World Cup that ridiculed the German side’s only black player.

Earlier this week, the federal government banned a far-right youth movement for spreading Nazi propaganda.

Irish Times

Defectors expose plans of Germany's 'real' Nazis

Inside report reveals the violence and Hitler worship of the National Democrats, an overtly racist party on the brink of electoral success

Germany's main neo-Nazi party pretends to be democratic. But its members hoard weapons, plan to rebuild Hitler's Reich and are using the economic crisis to try to make sweeping gains in this year's elections, a new and disturbing study of the extreme right has revealed.

To write their exposé on the increasingly influential neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), the authors spent two years infiltrating Germany's far right. They interviewed party leaders and defectors who have since quit the organisation in disgust. "The NPD is a dangerous organisation," warned Olaf Sundermeyer, one of the two journalists who wrote In the NPD, published in Germany last week. "It pretends to be democratic, but make no mistake about it: these people are genuine Nazis."

Despite government attempts to ban the party, the overtly racist NPD has already won seats in two of Germany's 16 regional state parliaments. It has some 220 members on local councils, and expects to consolidate its political power base in a series of regional and local polls this year. The NPD's leader, Udo Voigt, admits that his party is unlikely to gain a foothold in the national parliament in Germany's general election this September. But he insists: " My vision is to obtain seats in the Reichstag in 2013."

To outsiders and the press, the NPD tries to portray itself as a middle-class party. Members are schooled in Berlin on how to cope with difficult questions about the Third Reich and the Holocaust. At election time, rank-and-file skinheads are replaced by men with short haircuts and suits and its handful of far-right "intellectuals".

In their book, Mr Sundermeyer and his co-author, Christoph Ruf, make it clear that the economy and unemployment are playing into the hands of the NPD. The party has infiltrated militant jobless groups, and is winning support. "Germany's ability to cope with such developments is going to be on trial in 2009. It will be a test of the country's political maturity," they warn.

Some of the most disturbing revelations about the NPD, which began life in the mid-1960s, are provided by former members who were shocked by the violence of its members and their hero-worship of Adolf Hitler. Uwe Luthardt, a taxi driver, was in the NPD leadership for three years, but resigned after watching his party colleagues severely beat a punk rocker who had shouted "Goodnight white pride" at the group. "It was the straw that broke the camel's back," Mr Luthardt said.

He revealed that the party's regional headquarters in Jena is deliberately called the "Brown House" after Hitler's Munich HQ. The cellars of the building contain a weapons cache, and are adorned with photographs of SS men. Party members sing the outlawed Nazi "Horst Wessel" anthem and a song called "We're Going to Build an Underground Train Line from Jerusalem to Auschwitz".

Mr Luthardt described how the party is funded by donations from expatriate Nazis and their families who fled to South America after the Second World War. Cash also comes from concerts staged by far-right skinhead rock bands. "The objective is to bring back the Third Reich," he said.

"A new organisation of stormtroopers would take revenge on anyone who disagrees with them. The concept is simply: let's kick out all the foreigners, then Germans will have jobs again. The are convinced that they will win an election one day, and that then things will really get going."

Mr Ruf and Mr Sundermeyer say some areas of eastern Germany have been designated "national liberation zones" by the party, because intimidated foreigners do not dare to be seen there. The head of the NPD's youth wing, Michael Schäfer, justifies the party's anti-foreigner campaign, saying: "The German Volk [people] have existed for 1,000 years; they cannot simply be allowed to disappear."

Independent

Udo Voigt, leader of German far-right party, charged with defamation

Udo Voigt (second from left) at a neo-nazi conference with a bunch of friends.
Regular readers may recognise Nick Griffin's old mate Roberto Fiore (centre)

The head of the main German far-right party was charged Tuesday with incitement and defamation for allegedly publishing a pamphlet before the 2006 soccer World Cup that prosecutors said called into question whether non white players should be on the national team.

A prosecutor, Simone Herbeth, said in a statement that Udo Voigt, head of the National Democratic Party, had been charged with incitement and defamation over the pamphlets. The party spokesman, Klaus Beier, and a prominent member, Frank Schwerdt, have also been charged, Herbeth said.

"The indictment charges that the accused are responsible for publishing pamphlets ahead of the 2006 soccer World Cup which, through a picture of the No. 25" - a number that was worn by a black player at the time - "called into question whether this player, as well as other non white-skinned players, were worthy of representing Germany as national players," Herbeth said in a statement.

The pamphlets showed the traditional white German jersey with the No. 25, worn at the time by the defender Patrick Owomoyela. They read: "White, not just a jersey color! For a real NATIONAL team!"

Owomoyela, who has a German mother and a Nigerian father, plays for Werder Bremen but is no longer a member of the German national squad.

The National Democratic Party called the charges "absurd" and "political" in a statement issued on its Web site.

"The German justice authorities are ever more zealous when it comes to pursuing and persecuting the national opposition," the statement read.

Beier said in an interview by telephone that the use of No. 25 was "pure chance" and insisted that the quality of the printing was unclear, meaning that the number could be interpreted as a 26 or even a 23. "Everyone can see their own favorite number in it," Beier said.

Backed by the German soccer federation, Owomoyela filed suit against the party in 2006 over the pamphlets, some 70,000 of which were confiscated by the authorities during a search at the party's national headquarters.

Prosecutors charge that the party then printed another series of pamphlets showing 10 white and one black player in German national jerseys under the question, "German National Team 2010?"

International Herald Tribune

National Democratic Party (NPD). Germany’s leading nazi group. NPD leaders deny the Holocaust took place and revere Adolf Hitler. The NPD shares many of its activists with the outlawed Blood and Honour skinhead movement. In August 2002 Griffin attended a festival put on by the NPD’s newspaper Deutsche Stimme (German Voice), where he was photographed with Voigt and the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Later that month he took part in an NPD summer school with Mahler and Voigt. In May 2003 Griffin was billed to speak alongside Voigt, Fiore and the NPD’s lawyer Jürgen Rieger, but failed to turn up.

Griffin organised a BNP demonstration outside the German embassy when the German government tried unsuccessfully to ban the NPD. When Griffin and other BNP officers were arrested in December 2006 on suspicion of causing race hate, the NPD website called for support for them.

Germany's right-wing extremists in disarray

Germany's far-right National Democratic Party is in turmoil, according to internal party documents obtained by SPIEGEL. It is beset by financial problems and a deeply divided leadership. Leaders are also unsure what to do about the skinhead problem.

The old two-story building on Seelenbinderstrasse in Berlin's Köpenick neighborhood is like a fortress. To enter the building, through its reinforced-steel door, one has to pass through a beefed up security system. Monitors inside record every movement transmitted by cameras in the courtyard and on the roof.

When the master of the house drives up, burly men jump out of his mid-range sedan to secure the area. The man is a party leader who describes himself as both "enthusiastic" and "dogged." Some would describe him as the most dangerous man in Germany today. For more than 10 years Udo Voigt, a former aviation engineer and captain in the German army, has been the chairman of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), a position that makes him the leader of about 7,000 right-wing extremists.

Voigt, who has also been an elected member of a district council in Berlin for more than a year, has good reason to be taking security precautions. In addition to militant anarchists, the entire German state, including its intelligence apparatus, has set its sights on Voigt and his followers. All parties represented in the German parliament, the Bundestag, are constantly looking for ways to fight his right-wing realm -- either by attacking his party outright or investigating its finances.

Voigt and his followers have repeatedly, and deliberately, provoked the country's democrats, sometimes by referring to the Allied forces' bombing of Dresden in World War II as a "Holocaust of bombs" and sometimes by staging rallies at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. The NPD has also surrounded itself with an aura of violence. The boundaries are all too often unclear between the party and extremist right-wing thugs who target and assault foreigners, weaker members of society, leftists and gays.

Nevertheless, Germany still hasn't quite figured out how to respond to these erratic, right wing extremists. An attempt to ban the NPD failed miserably when it was brought before Germany's Federal Constitutional Court in 2003.

To Ban or Not to Ban

In the late summer of 2007, Kurt Beck, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), launched a new debate about banning the party. (more...) Beck wants to see German lawmakers "take on the brown demagogues with the full force of the law". The SPD even turned Beck's call to ban Voigt's party into an official resolution at its party convention. The interior ministers of the German states have also placed the NPD issue on the agenda, once again, for their next meeting.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency plans to complete an investigation of the NPD's internal affairs by late March. The report will be used to determine whether there is enough evidence to make a new legal attempt to ban the NPD.

Despite these official efforts, the public knows very little about what really happens behind the walls of the NPD headquarters building at Seelenbinderstrasse 42 in Berlin. Until now, that is.

SPIEGEL has obtained thousands of internal NPD documents, including copies of e-mails, concept papers and top-secret dossiers on the party's leaders, as well as lists of its members and donors. The documents provide a rare insight into the innermost workings of the extremist right-wing party.

Although this collection of information about the NPD leaves many questions unanswered, it does prove one thing beyond a doubt: This feared opponent of the German republic and its democratic ideals is a deeply divided group wracked by virulent infighting among its leaders. The party's financial affairs are in a shambles, and even its top leaders fear that it could fall apart. One of the most divisive issues within the NPD is its stance toward "free forces," radical right wing thugs prone to violence.

Just in time for a slew of parliamentary and municipal elections in 2008, a dispute over the NPD's direction has erupted within Voigt's entourage. With state elections in Lower Saxony and Hesse just a week away, little remains of the Berlin NPD leadership's hopes that an "offensive in the West" would produce a "turning point" in state parliamentary elections. While some within the extreme right-wing party seek to project an image of the NPD as a "clean" German nationalist party of law and order, others are apparently unwilling to do without the support of violent neo-Nazis.

A dispute between Voigt and his second-in-command, Holger Apfel, illustrates this schism. Apfel, a trained publishing executive who heads the NPD's group of eight deputies in the regional assembly of the eastern state of Saxony, has gained a reputation for his bluntly provocative rhetoric, but the so-called free forces are no longer acceptable even to him. In December 2007, he issued an unmistakable warning to Voigt that "a few hundred idiots nationwide are destroying the work of the last few years" and are "driving the biggest possible nail into our coffin regarding possible proceedings to ban the party."

The party, Apfel added, is on a "sectarian course," while the NPD party leadership's financial situation is "shit." The NPD politician has declined to comment on his e-mail correspondence with Voigt.

"Elephant in a China Shop"

Apfel is not Voigt's only critic from Saxony, an NPD stronghold. Referring to the party's public image, Jens Pühse, a member of the party's executive committee, recently wrote, in a letter to the NPD chairman: "We appear to have chosen the proverbial elephant in a china shop as our role model." Pühse added that efforts within the leadership to develop the NPD's position are being "torn apart" at grass roots level. Voigt was apparently annoyed by this "condescending advice," especially coming from Saxony, where the parliamentary leadership "can't handle its own affairs and hardly leaves the office anymore." Pühse promptly responded: "If you are serious about the things you write, the breakup of the party will be only a matter of time."

These internal party exchanges, on which both the party leader and Pühse declined to comment when contacted by SPIEGEL, hardly correspond to the image Voigt and his associates seek to project to their own supporters during the current election campaigns. They portray themselves as squeaky-clean politicians fighting against the supposedly decrepit "establishment parties." Voigt, at any rate, describes himself and his supposed national mission with these words: "I am proud to be the chairman of such a united community of action."

That seems a bit of an overstatement. In the Hesse state election campaign, for instance, the NPD put forward Marcel Wöll as its candidate, a man with a criminal record who appears to specialize in friendly fire.

Too Little Money, Too Much War Propaganda

Wöll recently snubbed many of his fellow party members with an amateurishly produced campaign ad. The ad depicts three gnomes with false beards digging for gold in the forest. An amateur actor made up to look like a foreigner, who is apparently supposed to represent a politician, promptly shows up and deprives the Hesse gnomes of their treasure. Suddenly candidate Wöll appears on the scene -- on horseback and carrying the NPD flag -- to put a stop to the supposed exploitation of the gnomes, and chases away the suit-wearing politician. According to Wöll, the bizarre ad is the "best the NPD has ever had".

If Wöll had had his way, a shovel would also have figured prominently in the ad. In another version, the politician was not just chased away by the NPD but was also beaten with a shovel. But party Chairman Voigt apparently felt that the alternate version was "not funny anymore". The "beating with the shovel," he warned, was a "clear depiction of attempted murder," which would only help the state interior ministers build their case to outlaw the party.

"War Propaganda"

The campaign ad wasn't the only instance in which Hesse candidate Wöll went a little too far. The man who likes to begin his e-mails to Voigt with the salutation "Heil to You!" has a history of putting his foot in his mouth. He ended a press release from his regional Hesse NPD organization, which according to the most recent opinion polls will garner a barely measurable share of the state vote in the January 27 election, with military rhetoric: "There will be victory in the end." Once again, Voigt felt compelled to censure the candidate. "Given these kinds of ambitious slogans," he wrote to Wöll a few weeks ago, "you must end up getting into the state parliament." Otherwise, he said, Wöll would merely be inviting ridicule and evoking memories of the "propaganda during the last days in the big war." Wöll has told SPIEGEL that his campaign is going well, although he declined to comment on the content of his e-mail correspondence.

A number of party officials apparently sensed early on that a right wing band of hooligans stand little chance of succeeding in a state governed by conservative agitator Roland Koch, a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and would have preferred to abandon the campaign in Hesse altogether. In an e-mail to Voigt in early December, Sascha Rossmüller, the NPD's deputy chairman, wrote that the party should "seriously consider how much additional benefit" even the modest sum of "€5,000 in the low-budget Hesse campaign" would in fact deliver.

NPD strategist Pühse described the party's dismal situation in a top-secret concept document. According to Pühse, the NPD has

"not enough membership revenue and only a few financial backers;"

"too few members and officials to be capable of conducting large-scale election campaigns;"

"and not enough support within the 'nationalist environment.'"

Pühse's last point must have been a particular source of debate at the NPD's Berlin headquarters. Even in other states, like Lower Saxony and Bavaria, motivation among party members and supporters doesn't appear to be very high. In a December memo titled "Emergency Report from Munich," deputy party chairman Rossmüller wrote to his fellow party members in Berlin that "hardly anything has been going well" during the preparations for municipal elections in Bavaria. The local organization in Munich, Rossmüller wrote, is "too weak" to perform its own duties -- so much so that "legionnaires" are needed to distribute flyers.

Hired Helpers

In Lower Saxony, where state parliamentary elections are likewise scheduled for Jan. 27, these hired hands should more aptly be referred to as "mercenaries." To prevent the campaign of the top NPD candidate in the state, Andreas Molau, from turning into a fiasco, the party's state organization apparently tried to recruit outside -- and paid -- campaign workers from within the neo-Nazi community. The party has been hiring people on a part-time basis to put up posters and hand out flyers, and has been paying them handsomely. In addition to a flat payment of €5,000, the party leadership agreed to pay a bonus of up to €20,000, depending on the outcome of the election. Employment contracts like these have only helped the cause of Voigt's adversaries. In a confidential e-mail to Voigt, Pühse lambasted the party organization in Lower Saxony for "cozying up to the free forces," adding that he found it inconceivable that Molau, the party's leading candidate in the state, "now has to shop for his campaign workers." Molau's actions, he wrote, are "serious mistakes that other state organizations will have to pay for in the next election campaigns."

Admitting that his own party lacks the clout to run an election campaign must be a bitter pill to swallow for any right-wing extremist. But the party has been ailing financially ever since state interior ministers did everything within their power to cut off its government funding. In the wake of the scandal (more...) in the eastern state of Thuringia over fabricated donations to the NPD, as well as the Bundestag administration's demands that the party repay roughly €870,000, money is scarcer than ever in Voigt's outfit -- and internal divisions have only made matters worse.

With the loss of government funding sources, the right-wing extremists are now dependent on a handful of financial backers, especially Jürgen Rieger, a neo-Nazi lawyer with an extensive criminal record who has been a member of the NPD's executive committee since 2006. Rieger was the executor of the estate of Wilhelm Tietjen, a former Nazi from the northern city of Bremen who had left his fortune to an obscure group, headed by Rieger, called the "Society for Biological Anthropology, Eugenics and Behavioral Research."

According to the will, Rieger was to use Tietjen's estate - apparently worth more than €1 million - in part to "establish a suitable sperm bank" for the purpose of propagating elite genetic material. But in addition to the intended breeding of a new Aryan race, Rieger apparently became involved in the money-lending business. According to German domestic intelligence, the NPD lawyer used the money from the Tietjen estate to issue loans totaling about €500,000. And when it comes to money, it appears that even far-right solidarity has its limits. "I'm working my ass off," party Chairman Voigt complained last spring to his deputy Apfel, to "get Rieger to give me an extension to repay the loans."

Other members of the executive committee are apparently eager to put the party's controversial benefactor out to pasture. In an e-mail, NPD ideologue Jürgen Gansel described Rieger as a "sperm banker and skull measurer" living "in his Aryan world." Gansel has also declined to comment on his e-mail correspondence.

Bad News from the Provinces

The current state of the NPD is characterized by provincial troubles and minor quarrels that could very well jeopardize its survival. Indeed, Voigt has recently been the recipient of bad news from all across the party:

In the NPD's local organization in Kelheim-Landshut, located in southern Germany, for instance, officials were desperately trying to figure out what happened to €1,100 that had disappeared from the party's bank account. Axel Michaelis, who manages the NPD's affairs in Bavaria, was incensed over this example of shoddy bookkeeping. "The books have to be cleaned up," he wrote to the organization. "The Bundestag is breathing down our necks; they're just waiting for us to make these kinds of mistakes." The Bavarian official, who has declined to comment on his e-mails, insists that the local organization's accounts have since been cleaned up with a cash deposit.

Strange things are also happening in the NPD's local organization in another Bavarian district, Altötting. The local officials, an irritated Michaelis wrote in an e-mail to Altötting on June 29, "must have been out of their minds" to "post a donation form on the Internet," especially with "home telephone numbers and addresses." If anyone hits upon the idea to print out the form, he added, "and engage in donation fraud, we might as well close up shop." According to Michaelis, "any fool" can have a treasurer's stamp made.

In the southern Bavarian city of Passau, party officials accused one of their own of attempting to misappropriate donations with the help of supposedly fabricated travel expense reports. The affair escalated to the point where the offending party member was even threatened with criminal prosecution. In an e-mail under the heading "Urgent, action needed!," the horrified Voigt wrote to his Bavarian state chairman: "We make ourselves look like fools when we air our party's dirty laundry in full view of the police. NPD comrades threatening other NPD comrades with legal action -- those are probably the worst possible headlines we can produce!"

The comrades, it appears, are more involved with themselves than with the reviled "democratic pigs." A story that aired last year on "Panorama," a program broadcast by the NDR television network, triggered a war of words within the party. Norman Bordin, a member of the NPD's Bavarian state executive committee, was caught on hidden camera giving banned Hitler salute during a skinhead concert in Hungary. NPD General Secretary Peter Marx was the first to react, when he distanced himself from what he described as "anti-Semitic excesses" and called for disciplinary action against Bordin.

Marx's press release, however, met with derision from Uwe Meenen, another party official in Bavaria. "If the state executive committee were to offer the Star of David as a reward for the slimy achievements of philosemitism," Meenen wrote in a venomous e-mail, "NPD General Secretary Peter Marx would certainly be at the front of the line." Deputy Chairman Rossmüller became involved in the exchange and noted: "Citizens don't want to vote for a skinhead party or a Nazi party." After Bordin's performance, he added, it would be advisable for "the NPD to no longer associate itself with skinhead concerts."

These words came as a shock to many a party worker. Meenen, who declined to speak with SPIEGEL, said he was distressed over the "devastating impact" of the Marx statement, and warned that it could lead to "young and revolutionary forces refusing to become involved in the state leadership in the future," and that the party "might as well forget about the state parliamentary elections."

"Foolish Amateurs"

Despite the NPD leadership's color-conscious resolution ("Our flags are black -- but our units are not"), the tiresome quarrel over how to handle "free forces" dragged on throughout the year. Shortly before Christmas, the discussion over masked, so-called autonomous nationalists appearing at NPD rallies injected even more controversy into the party dynamic.

In December, Deputy Chairman Rossmüller announced harsh measures to deal with these "foolish amateurs" who, in his words, "behave like crazy Coca-Cola Americans." As the official in charge of party rallies, he told Voigt, he would "have no qualms" about ordering the removal of these "enemies of the movement in response to even the slightest provocation" -- "even with the help of the police." Rossmüller has also refused to comment on the contents of his e-mails.

The NPD having neo-Nazis arrested -- this is a paradox that would hardly fit into the party leadership's PR strategy of producing headlines at all costs. This craving for public attention appears to have triggered desperate measures in some cases, as evidenced by a strategy Andreas Molau, the previously unknown NPD candidate in Lower Saxony, proposed to Chairman Voigt last summer to raise his profile in the media. According to the plan, Molau would publicly announce that he was looking for property in Lower Saxony. Under the assumption that potential sellers could be found, the NPD candidate would "visit properties in the state, announcing his visits in advance, once every two or three weeks."

The strategists apparently expected protests from local people opposed to having the NPD set up shop in their communities. As a result, Molau writes, "we would be guaranteed regular local media coverage of the top candidate." Chairman Voigt apparently thought the deceptive maneuver was an excellent idea. In an e-mail, he promptly instructed Molau to hold off on the plan until the fall, "otherwise its effect will have disappeared completely by the time the election rolls around." When SPIEGEL confronted him with the contents of the e-mails, Molau declined to comment. Chairman Voigt, however, noted that he has "no way of verifying the authenticity, completeness and general context" of the "quotes."

Whatever the right-wing extremists quarrel about internally, and whatever they happen to be planning, it always seems more ridiculous than threatening. This raises the question of whether they should in fact be treated as political adversaries worth taking seriously -- and whether proceedings to outlaw the party are even necessary. Perhaps the best way to deal with the NPD is to emulate the pope's approach.

On April 16, 2007, the NPD chairman sent a birthday e-mail to the Holy Father in Rome. Voigt wrote in his obsequious message that he admires Benedict XVI for his "argumentative disposition, respectability and intrepidness," ending the e-mail with the words: "May your pontificate lead to a revival of moral and cultural values."

The pope simply didn't respond.

Spiegel Online

Merkel under pressure to ban neo-Nazi party

Chancellor Angela Merkel is coming under mounting pressure to ban Germany's main neo-Nazi party following a brutal attack on eight Indian traders who were chased and beaten by a mob screaming racist abuse.

A leader of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) was charged with inciting racial hatred yesterday after he proposed Adolf Hitler's former deputy, Rudolf Hess, for the Nobel Peace Prize. Hours after Udo Voigt made the remarks in a speech in Jena marking the 20th anniversary of Hess's death last Saturday night, the Indian men were chased through the nearby town of Mügeln.

Kurt Beck, the leader of Ms Merkel's Social Democrat coalition partners, said that in light of the attacks he was preparing a new legal initiative aimed at outlawing the NPD. But Ms Merkel said she remained sceptical about such a move.

"I found the previous experience we had with this highly disagreeable," she said. "I definitely don't want a repeat of last time." An effort to ban the NPD failed in 2003 when judges at the country's highest court rejected the government's case after it emerged that some of the testimony was from government informants within the party.

The calls for a ban on Germany's largest neo-Nazi party - which has won parliamentary seats in two eastern states in recent regional elections - were the latest response to last weekend's disturbing outbreak of xenophobic violence.

Local people in the small town in the east German state of Saxony were enjoying the final hours of an annual street party on Saturday night when a drunken mob of 50 youths rampaged through a market and started harassing eight Indian stall holders who were selling textiles.

Shouting, "Get out of Germany" and chanting the far right slogan "Long live the national resistance" the gang chased the terrified Indians, who took refuge in a pizzeria and tried to barricade themselves in with the restaurant's tables. However, the mob smashed their way into the building, kicking and punching the Indians and attacking them with bottles. More than 70 heavily armed riot police rescued them. Gurminder Singh, one of the injured men, appeared on German television with a six-inch long head wound.

Amal, one of the main anti-Nazi groups in the region, said there had been 137 neo-Nazi attacks on individuals in Saxony during the first half of 2007, but believes the unofficial figure is much higher.

A recent survey conducted by the Forsa research group showed that every second east German youth between the age of 14 and 25 believed that National Socialism had " good sides".

The NPD won seats in Saxony in the state's last elections, and also captured seats in Ms Merkel's home state of Mecklenburg-Pomerania last year, when violent crimes by far-right extremists reached their highest level since the country's reunification in 1990. Rising far-right violence prompted Ms Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schröder to launch an attempt to ban the NPD in 2003, but the result was a legal fiasco. A ban was rejected by Germany's Karlsruhe constitutional court after it established that most of the evidence against the far-right party was inadmissible as it had been collected by government intelligence agents who had infiltrated the organisation.

Independent