Frank Schwerdt

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Frank Schwerdt at a right-wing extremist rally on May 29, 2004 in Saalfeld

Frank Schwerdt (born July 25, 1944 in Berlin ; † October 22, 2016 ) was a German right-wing extremist , politician and criminal . At times he was deputy federal chairman of the NPD , state chairman of the NPD Thuringia from 2001 to 2012 and district chairman of the NPD Erfurt . He was considered a key figure in right-wing extremist education.

Life

First party affiliations

In the 1960s, the studied surveying technician was active in the right-wing extremist scene in West Berlin and was a member of the NPD. A little later, however, he joined the CDU and headed the Berlin-Heiligensee local association for eleven years . In 1989 he left the CDU, joined the Republicans and worked on the state executive. In 1991 he left the Republicans again because they were too loyal to the constitution. He then moved to the German League for People and Homeland (DLVH), where he was active as chairman of the Berlin-Brandenburg regional association and was significantly involved in setting up the Hoffmann-von-Fallersleben educational institution .

Chairman of the Die Nationalen eV association

In 1993 Schwerdt took over the chairmanship of the association Die Nationalen eV, founded in Berlin in 1991, and changed its composition, structure and goals significantly. While the moderate right left the association, under the guidance of the new chairman, it made a strong rapprochement with the neo-Nazi spectrum and became a national socialist-oriented, transnational collection movement that was particularly active in Berlin and Brandenburg. Schwerdt was also responsible for the party organ Berlin-Brandenburger Zeitung . National Renewal Newspaper (BBZ). At times the aid organization for national political prisoners and their relatives (HNG) was also represented on the Internet via the BBZ domain. The Berlin publishing house Vortrag-Buch-Reise (VBR-Verlags GmbH for Political Education eV) was founded from the environment of the "National", with Schwerdt acting as its managing director.

In mid-November 1997 the association Die Nationalen eV dissolved itself in order to forestall an impending ban. The association's activities continued in Berlin and Brandenburg despite the official dissolution. As early as 1997 a so-called coordination council had met in Berlin, to which Schwerdt and representatives of the individual former free comradeships belonged and whose function was mainly to exchange information with one another. The size of the circle around Schwerdt, which continued the activities of the association in Berlin and Brandenburg, including influenced "comradeships" is estimated at around 50 members. The publication of the BBZ also continued until Schwerdt was sentenced to prison in 1998. At this time there was also a considerable decline in membership and loss of importance of the neo-Nazi circle around Schwerdt (1998: around 150; 1999: around 50), and even after his release from prison, activities only got off to a slow start, as this is now on concentrated his function as a member of the national board of the NPD.

Role in the NPD

Frank Schwerdt at the national party conference of the NPD in November 2006

After the dissolution of the National, Schwerdt rejoined the NPD, where he was made a member of the federal executive committee in January 1998 and was appointed federal manager. The former chairman of the "National" then endeavored to persuade the remaining 110 members of the association to join the NPD and its youth organizations. This also meant an upgrading of the party that had hitherto been almost insignificant in the Berlin-Brandenburg area, which had only 60 members in the state of Brandenburg, whereby it had already tripled its number. The Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution found at the time that 1997 was “possibly a turnaround for the NPD in Brandenburg”.

In April 2001 Schwerdt was elected chairman of the NPD Thuringia at the state party conference in Saalfeld and on September 8, 2001 in Eisenach as the top candidate for the federal election in autumn 2002. Ralf Wohlleben from Jena became his deputy . At the state party conference in Eisenach, the candidate clearly spoke out in favor of cooperation with the “free” forces, that is, the “Free Comradeships”, which are also very active in Thuringia. The "well-functioning work in Thuringia with non-party forces in the country (should) be continued and expanded". When Schwerdt took over the state chairmanship, he shifted the focus of his activities to Thuringia and has since appeared as a speaker at almost all neo-Nazi events such as the Thuringian Days of National Youth , Festival of the Nations or Rock for Germany .

At the state party congress of the NPD in September 2004, Schwerdt was the state chairman and at the 30th ordinary federal party congress on 30./31. October confirmed in Leinefelde as national board of the NPD. With the neo-Nazi Thorsten Heise from Fretterode (Northern Thuringia), a second Thuringian party member was accepted as an assessor on the board.

At the national party conference of the NPD in April 2009 in Berlin , Schwerdt was elected deputy federal chairman. From 2009 to 2014 he was a member of the Erfurt city ​​council.

death

Frank Schwerdt died on October 22, 2016 after a short, serious illness.

meaning

On the question of the informants in the NPD

At the beginning of 2002, Schwerdt came under suspicion in connection with the ongoing exposure of NPD functionaries as informants, after his NPD regional deputy in Thuringia, Tino Brandt , had already been exposed. Allegedly had Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger Schwerdt as undercover agent uncovers the Thuringian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and also the Berlin Tagesspiegel brought this message. However, he rejected this and the suspicion could not be substantiated in the further course of the investigation. However, in publications and internet forums of the right-wing extremist scene, speculations continued to circulate based on his friendly contacts with Brandt, which were discussed by the Hamburg neo-Nazi Christian Worch , among others . Even after his death, Schwerdt's role in this context remained unresolved, with the Interior Ministry refusing to provide information to the NSU investigative committee of the state parliament during the ongoing NSU trial and invoking its duty of confidentiality .

Connections to the right-wing extremist scene

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Schwerdt had established intensive contacts with the neo-Nazi scene of the Free Comradeships, which lasted until his death and were further expanded. He worked particularly closely with Hans-Christian Wendt , a functionary of the FAP and later editor of the “Nachrichten” of the aid organization for national political prisoners and their relatives (HNG) and editor of the BBZ. Wendt founded a working group of national socialists inside and outside the NPD (AGNS) at the beginning of 1998, " through which neo-Nazis should be given the opportunity to get involved in the NPD without formal party membership " and "put the NPD on the right course from an ideological perspective ". The attempts by Schwerdt and Wendt to infiltrate meeting places and clubs of right-wing youths in rural Brandenburg, to set up so-called "national youth clubs" and to tie them to the structures of the free comradeships with the help of local cadres , were particularly evident in Neuruppin and Guben . He was regarded as the spiritual leader of the Kameradschaft Oberhavel founded in 1996 , which was banned after just one year .

The group around Schwerdt thus “ eventually developed into the most important hub of the East German neo-Nazi scene. Not only did the Berlin neo-Nazi comradeships coordinate here, but intensive development work was also carried out in the eastern German states ”. In mid-1998, the officially disbanded nationalities included a university group and the youth organization "Jungnationale", and they formed the center of a network of over 30 groups made up of local and district associations and independent comradeships in Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.

Even after his official move to Thuringia, Schwerdt remained active in the Berlin-Brandenburg area. In 2001, with the help of the NPD managing director, the Comradeship Märkischer Heimatschutz (MHS) was founded to try to coordinate the right-wing extremist scene and its activists in the Barnim, Märkisch-Oderland, Uckermark and Oberhavel districts. In 2003, the association, chaired by Gordon Reinholz, already had around 40 members. At the beginning of 2002 a so-called Anti-Antifa brochure was circulating in Angermünde and Schwedt , for which Schwerdt was responsible under press law and for which Anti-Antifa Berlin acted as the order address. On May 1, 2003, he organized a parade of around 2000 right-wing extremists in Berlin, including an Italian and a Spanish bloc and, as Schwerdt himself emphasized in his opening speech in front of the former Reichssportfeld, some “ethnic German” guests from Alsace. In addition to Schwerdt as registrant, the following also took part: Udo Voigt (NPD), Holger Apfel (NPD), Jörg Hähnel (NPD), Doris Zutt (NPD) and Jürgen Rieger . An appearance by the Italian right-wing extremist Roberto Fiore was also planned .

Connections to the NSU

After the right-wing extremist terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) became known at the end of 2011, connections between Schwerdt and the NSU core trio came to light in the course of the investigation. So did Uwe Mundlos worked for him as a driver in the late 1990s. Several photos by apabiz show that Schwerdt and Beate Zschäpe took part in an NPD march in Erfurt on January 17, 1998 . The Thuringian homeland security activist Andre Kapke asked Schwerdt for help in 1998 when the trio went underground . However, Schwerdt refused to do so.

Convictions for sedition and similar offenses

From mid-1998 to May 1999 Schwerdt served a nine-month prison sentence in the Tegel correctional facility for inciting people, producing and distributing Nazi propaganda material, and using symbols of forbidden organizations . The verdict was in connection with the neo-Nazi publication NS-Schulungsbriefe , the organ of an internal circle of the "National" with the name "Völkischer Freundeskreis".

From 30 November 1999 to July 2000 Schwerdt had a six-month sentence in an open prison in again JVA Plötzensee serve out because it was late October found guilty in 1998, was president of the extreme right-wing publishing house lecture book travel (VBR), the violent CD Our unity makes us the power of the Thuringian right-wing rock band Volksverhetzer to have produced and organized the sale of around 2,500 copies.

In March 2008, Schwerdt, along with the then NPD chairman Udo Voigt and party press spokesman Klaus Beier, was charged with sedition and insult. As part of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the NPD published a World Cup planner with the racist headline “White! Not just a jersey color! ”. Schwerdt was sentenced to a ten-month suspended sentence. The proceedings then went through several instances. The last verdict came in May 2014 with a seven-month prison sentence and € 2500 probation payment to the German sports aid organization. So far nothing is known about the further course of the proceedings.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e NPD Vice Frank Schwerdt is dead . Endstation Rechts , October 24, 2016, accessed on February 3, 2017.
  2. a b c d e f g h Article about " Frank Schwerdt " in the dictionary of right-wing extremism from Belltower.News
  3. a b c d e f g Alexander Fröhlich: Was NPD functionary Frank Schwerdt undercover? Potsdam Latest News , February 3, 2017, accessed February 18, 2017 .
  4. ^ Right-wing extremism and democratic resistance. (PDF) Response of the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior to the major question from the Left Party.PDS parliamentary group. In: die-linke-thl.de. December 5, 2005, accessed May 16, 2013 .
  5. City council election on June 7, 2009 (PDF 19kB) , accessed on October 26, 2016
  6. Printed matter 2/7065 Landtag Saxony. quoted from the collection of material online: facts and arguments on the NPD ban. (No longer available online.) Hagalil , archived from the original on March 5, 2016 ; accessed on February 18, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / antisemitismus.net
  7. Frank Schneider: NPD like a phoenix from the ashes . In: Jungle World . No. 51 , December 11, 1997 ( jungle-world.com ). NPD like phoenix from the ashes ( memento of the original from February 19, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / jungle-world.com
  8. Heike Kleffner : Right-wing extremists come out pepper and salt. the daily newspaper , January 18, 2002, accessed on February 18, 2017 .
  9. ↑ March right, block left. Der Tagesspiegel , May 2, 2003, accessed on February 18, 2017 .
  10. NPD Federal Vice Frank Schwerdt had contact with members of the later NSU. NSU-Watch , March 13, 2012, accessed on February 18, 2017 .
  11. ^ "NSU": NPD functionary admits contacts to terrorist cell. Frankfurter Allgemeine , March 13, 2012, accessed on February 18, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Incitement to the people: One year on probation for NPD European top candidate Voigt , Endstation-rechts.de May 13, 2014.
  13. ^ Punishment for top NPD people Sueddeutsche.de May 14, 2014.