Günther Kissel

Günther Kissel (born December 26, 1917 in Solingen ; † February 19, 2011 there ) was a German building contractor who was controversial because of his right-wing extremist political views and his Holocaust denial .

The builder

In 1945 Günther Kissel joined the construction company founded by his grandfather in 1888, in which he himself had trained as a bricklayer, and called it "Kissel-Rapid". He continued to expand the company, which was ultimately active nationwide and most recently made around 30 million euros in sales per year. He also founded other companies, such as real estate management, the "Kissel-Heimbau" for matters relating to home ownership and a company for real estate project development, all of which operate under the "Kissel Group".

As an entrepreneur, Kissel was recognized and respected, albeit contradicting his business decisions. For 27 years he was head master of the Solingen building guild . From the 1970s he built several senior facilities in Solingen. Although he attracted attention through xenophobic statements, more than half of his employees were not of German nationality, and his company built the DITIB Merkez mosque in Duisburg-Marxloh , which in turn aroused resentment in right-wing circles.

In 1989, representatives of the city of Solingen boycotted the baptism of a senior citizens' facility built by Kissel in Solingen-Merscheid because he had refused to name one of the houses after the Israeli twin town Nes Ziona . Despite these "irritations", as he called it, the CDU member of the Bundestag , Bernd Wilz , gave the keynote address. The city, on the other hand, had to justify itself publicly because it had awarded the right-wing extremist Kissel the contract to expand the Geschwister-Scholl-Schule .

Kissel died at the age of 94 and was buried in the cemetery at the Dorper Church , which his father built and which he himself supported with donations. The funeral ceremony took place under police protection. However, there were no feared incidents by anti-fascist demonstrators.

Political opinions

At the Second World War Günther Kissel participated as an officer of the Wehrmacht in part and was seriously wounded on the Eastern Front. He could never get over the war defeat and subsequent hostility, which led to his taking extreme right-wing political views until his death.

Kissel made no secret of his political views and propagated them publicly. On the occasion of his 65th birthday, he had a memorandum distributed in which he tried to put the atrocities of the National Socialists into perspective and complained that the proportion of foreigners in Germany was too high. He stood up for the convicted concentration camp overseer Gottfried Weise , invited the Holocaust denier David Irving to give lectures and, in old age, joined “ Pro NRW ”. Kissel intended to research by the social scientist Alexander Homes also a member of the extreme right Witikobunds that of the later and participants NPD -member Hans-Ulrich Pieper aligned Düsseldorf Herrenrunde have been.

Kissel financed numerous projects in the right-wing extremist political spectrum, such as the association supported by Horst Mahler for the rehabilitation of those persecuted for contesting the Holocaust and the right-wing extremist association Collegium Humanum . He donated large sums of money to the Gedächtnisstätte association , which wanted to build a “memorial for the victims of the Second World War through bombs, deportation, expulsion and prison camps” in Borna, Saxony , which is intended solely to commemorate civilian German war victims. According to a ruling by the Wuppertal Regional Court in 1997, Günther Kissel could be called an "Auschwitz denier" and a "popular seducer" with impunity. Kissel was in 2002 Weimar from the publishing company Mountain belonging Druffel-Verlag , which is classified as extreme right by the intelligence with which Helmut Sündermann medal honored.

After the assassination attempt in Solingen on May 29, 1993, there were calls for a boycott against Kissel because he had made trivial statements about it (“Turkish fire with fatal consequences”), and he withdrew from the public. He celebrated his 90th birthday with numerous like-minded guests. The laudation was given by the publisher Gert Sudholt , former chairman of the Holocaust-denying Society for Free Journalism (GfP) and owner of the Berg publishing house , which publishes books and brochures with right-wing extremist content. When it became known that Lord Mayor Franz Haug , the SPD parliamentary group leader in the Solingen Council, Ernst Lauterjung, and other Solingen politicians would also attend this celebration, massive public protests broke out in the city, especially since Kissel wrote a 39-page manuscript of a planned manuscript for his birthday invitation He had enclosed a speech in which he denied Germany's war guilt and relativized the Holocaust (“maybe only 500,000 Jews”). The politicians then had to justify their visit. The public allegations only ended when the city council distanced itself from Kissel's speech with a resolution, which he did not deliver.

On the occasion of his 90th birthday, Günther Kissel asked for donations for the Rescue Dorper Church initiative . When the chairman of the initiative, Axel Heibges, and the parish pastor Joachim Römelt became aware of the wording of Kissel's birthday speech, they wrote him a letter in which they clearly distanced themselves from his positions and made it up to him to unload them. They did not attend the birthday party and offered to refund the donations.

Publications

• My concern for Germany. Critical thoughts of an entrepreneur and contemporary witness , self-published Solingen 2003

literature

• Andreas Speit / Andrea Röpke: Neo-Nazis in pinstripes. The NPD on the way to the middle of society , 2008, ISBN 978-3861534679 , p. 114f.

Web links

• Obituary for Günther Kissel on solinger-tageblatt.de v. February 22, 2011
• Obituary for Günther Kissel on rp-online.de v. February 22, 2011
• Auschwitz denier Günther Kissel is dead on indymedia.org
• Motion of the Bündnis '90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group to the City Council of Solingen v. February 25, 2007 (PDF; 138 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary in the Rheinische Post , February 23, 2011. The year of birth is given incorrectly.
2. ↑ Mathias Tanner (ed.): Dispute about the minaret: Living together in a religiously pluralistic society , Theologischer Verlag Zurich, Zurich, 2009, page 213
3. ↑ Company chronicle on kissel-gruppe.de ( Memento of the original from September 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) 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. 
4. ↑ kissel-gruppe.de ( Memento of the original from February 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ No agreement at Kissel on rp-online.de v. March 23, 2012
6. ↑ Right-wing extremist builds on taz.de v. October 6, 2006
7. ↑ Solingen: Public contracts for right-wing building contractors on daserste.ndr.de v. September 12, 1996
8. ↑ Last escort for Günther Kissel on solinger-tageblatt.de v. March 1, 2011
9. ↑ Johannes Nitschmann: Right-wing extremists strive for parliaments: magic hat and cloak. WDR, November 27, 2007, archived from the original on October 14, 2013 ; Retrieved February 19, 2014 . 
10. ↑ With his “Aufmunterung” Kissel put himself in the ultra-right light , Frankfurter Rundschau , September 10, 1997
11. ↑ Celebrating with an incorrigible Nazi? on terz.org v. July 31, 2007
12. ↑ Jürgen Zurheide: Celebration with Holocaust deniers. Der Tagesspiegel, January 17, 2007, accessed on February 20, 2014 . 
13. ↑ Kissel laughs into his fist at rp-online.de v. January 21, 2007
14. ^ Official Journal of the City of Solingen v. June 28, 2007, p. 3 ( Memento of the original from February 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 55 kB)  
15. ↑ Unload for the Kissel celebration on rp-online.de v. February 11, 2007