House of Identitarian Movement in Halle (Saale)

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House of the Identitarian Movement in April 2018

The House of the Identitarian Movement in Halle (Saale) was a center and residential project for the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement at Adam-Kuckhoff-Straße 16 in Halle from 2017 to the end of 2019 . The AfD member of the state parliament Hans-Thomas Tillschneider maintained a parliamentary office in the house .

Foundation and purpose

On June 6, 2017, the house project was officially announced on the pages of the One Percent for Our Country campaign and the Sezession magazine . Both go back to the new right publisher Götz Kubitschek , who, as the strategic head, is also largely responsible for the house project. Initially, reference was made to a location of the project in the federal state of Saxony. Its aim is to create another point of contact for the New Right alongside the Institute for State Policy (IfS) in Schnellroda and the Library of Conservatism in Berlin . In addition to an office floor, the building should have a film studio, an event hall and a conference room. Donations were solicited for renovation, security measures and running costs.

A building in the Steintor quarter opposite the humanities Steintor campus of the University of Halle-Wittenberg was ultimately chosen as the location for the house project . Several surveillance cameras were installed on the house. The house should have cost 330,000 euros together with the 404 m² property and has belonged to Helmut Englmann from Johannesberg in Bavaria , Lower Franconia , since January 1, 2017 , founder of the Titurel Foundation in Bad Nauheim , Hesse , which acts as a funding instrument of the IfS. Andreas Lichert (AfD), who is also the chairman of the Association for State Policy, is named as the foundation's contact. After researching the world in the land register files, Lichert appeared in a sales contract dated April 14, 2016 as the buyer's agent. Andreas Lichert, who ran for the Hessian AfD for the 19th Bundestag , denied in August 2017 that he had bought the house in Saxony-Anhalt for use by the Identitarian Movement. “The 'Identitarian Movement' is neither tenant nor operator of the property,” Lichert said at the time.

In the spring of 2017, members of the Identitarian Movement moved into the house. It served as the center of the activists of the local identity group “Kontrakultur Halle”. According to observers from Halle, the identity movement in the city first appeared in public in 2015 when members distributed leaflets in front of the Marktkirche . The group attracted attention nationwide when they walled up the entrance to a house in Halle two days before the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt in 2016 , in which the campaign Here I live, here I am voting for a trial vote for people living permanently in Germany and due to their non- German citizenship organized people not entitled to vote. Another 'polling station' they would have blocked with chains, explained Kontrakultur Halle. The group published a picture of the action and a press review with links to media reports on its Facebook presence . Three months after the action, the Halle public prosecutor closed the investigation because the perpetrators could not be identified.

The leading head of the Halle group is the convicted right-wing extremist Mario Müller. He is the founder and leader of the group "Kontrakultur Halle". According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Saxony-Anhalt, “contra culture” is a regional division of the Identitarian Movement, but it was founded before the Identitarian Movement began to gain a foothold in Germany. Like the Identitarian Movement in Saxony-Anhalt, counterculture is observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Müller is the author of a book by Götz Kubitschek published by Antaios Verlag with the title Kontrakultur and the logo of the Identitarian Movement on the cover.

In addition to an advertising agency, the one percent initiative , which was founded in 2015 and sees itself as a “right-wing NGO ”, also used rooms in the house. The former NPD politician Michael Schäfer was presented as an employee in the office there. An office of the Antaios Verlag von Kubitschek was also to be relocated to the house project.

In July 2017, a handout from the house circulated to residents in social networks. Here the IB center presents itself as a “patriotic house project” with leisure events and book evenings. According to the residents, a “cultural evening” was organized in the house together with the Saxon-Anhalt AfD members of the state parliament Hagen Kohl , Jan Wenzel Schmidt and Hans-Thomas Tillschneider.

At the end of June 2020 it became known that the previous owner had sold the house to a local property management company after it had been vacated.

Significance for the New Right

According to Der Freitag , the Halle area has developed into a hub of the new right movement in recent years . With the ideological armament of the Institute for State Policy (IfS), the Halle-Leobener Burschenschaft Germania (HLB) and an “unprecedented direct mandate AfD”, the article sees The Tactics Going On from the magazine analyze & kritik Halle as a kind of “model region” for the formal and informal collaboration between different groups of the new right spectrum.

David Anbich from the right-wing extremism office also concedes that the Halle project is a “model”.

According to Christoph D. Richter from Deutschlandfunk, it is currently the most important project in German-speaking countries for the Identitarian Movement . The house wants to be "a kind of hipster club for the right-wing Tinder generation".

Reactions

Neighbors publicly expressed their displeasure with the house project. 120 residents stated in an open letter that they did not want any neighborhood with its residents. They joined together to form a citizens' initiative , which, according to Deutschlandfunk, made a similar statement: “We don't want right-wing extremists in our neighborhood. Those who exclude others cannot claim to be good neighbors. "

A spokesman for the city of Halle told the MDR that the city administration "does not like" the activities of the identities in Halle. The IB excelled "through various campaigns that also made it clear that they are not interested in everyone living together in the city."

There were repeated militant actions against the center of the Identitarian Movement. Bags of paint were thrown at the house several times, and in one case with butyric acid and stones. Parked residents' cars were damaged and dumpsters were set on fire. The Saxony-Anhalt police investigated the breach of the peace and property damage .

Up to 700 people took part in several demonstrations against the house as the center of the IB.

The housing project of the Identitarian Movement also employed the data protection officer of Saxony-Anhalt. Attaching three surveillance cameras enables residents to monitor the public space . This is subject to strict rules. According to their own information, the Saxony-Anhalt police made an administrative offense report .

A house search by the police took place in November 2017 and storage media were confiscated. The measure was related to an incident in June 2017 in the Harz canteen in Halle. A group of five had appeared in the cafeteria, insulting and threatening those present.

Also in November, two plainclothes officers from the Saxony-Anhalt police force were attacked by “identities” from the house. The incident occurred after a protest took place in front of the house, which also included acts of violence. Then two “identities” left the building, armed with hard hats, signs, baseball bats and pepper spray. When they met the plainclothes police, they attacked them with pepper spray . The police could only repel the attackers by drawing their service weapons. Thorsten Hanel from the Halle-based association Mit einer eV posed the question in the MDR what would have happened if it had not hit civil servants, but people who could not have defended themselves with their service weapon. In June 2020, an involved IB activist was sentenced to an eight-month suspended sentence; the co-defendant was acquitted.

At a demonstration against the IB project in May 2018, Halle's mayor Bernd Wiegand (independent) spoke for the first time in the immediate vicinity of the house and said: “The right-wing extremist center is not wanted in Halle”. The specific reason for the demonstration by 200 people from Halle was an event in the IB building on the so-called “Liberation Day” with MP Frank Pasemann (AfD). The member of the Bundestag had visited representatives of Syria's President Assad with a delegation .

The last major counter-demonstration took place on July 20, 2019 during the IB “Street Festival”. While there were almost 200 participants from all over Germany on the part of the IB, the counter-protest with over 3000 people was around 15 times larger. One day before the IB event, numerous sprayers with right-wing or right-wing radical content appeared in the urban area of ​​Halle, which were sprayed over and removed relatively quickly.

Hans-Thomas Tillschneider’s parliamentary office

Although the Alternative for Germany has passed an incompatibility resolution that forbids any connection between the party and the Identitarian Movement, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, member of the AfD state parliament, opened his parliamentary office at the beginning of September 2017 in the House of the Identitarian Movement. Tillschneider denied having violated his party's decision. He is a subtenant of the One Percent Initiative , he told the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , and feels strongly connected to the house project: "We need, especially close to the universities, meeting places of a counterculture to the leftist mainstream."

The then AfD state chairman André Poggenburg saw no problem in 2018 and said: “A member of parliament can look for his office if he has received an offer. You can already separate them from each other. So you can try not to want to separate them. But you can already separate them from each other. And you have to assume that perhaps the willingness of the house owner there was greater than the willingness of others to give an AfD member an office there. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Identitarians without a center. taz.de, December 13, 2019.
  2. ↑ Lighthouse of the right-wing extremists failed: Identitarians give up house project in Halle. mz-web.de, December 13, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b parting instead of mohawk: a right house project in Halle. In: Neues Deutschland , June 20, 2017.
  4. ↑ a b Kubitschek's dream of the Nazi neighborhood. Saxony-Anhalt Right Winger, June 18, 2017, accessed on November 9, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Jan Petter: Right-wing hipsters want to establish a house project in Halle. In: Bento . July 28, 2017. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Right house project planned in Halle. In: MDR Sputnik. July 28, 2017. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Oliver Müller-Lorey: Identitarian movement in Halle: Trouble with camera surveillance from the right. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. September 18, 2017. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Bought a house for “identitarians”? In: Volksstimme.de . August 28, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2017 .
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g Christoph D. Richter: Right house project in Halle - AfD and identitarians under one roof. Deutschlandfunk, November 4, 2017, accessed on November 8, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Migrants demand the right to vote for everyone. In: Volksstimme.de . August 17, 2017. Retrieved January 11, 2018 .
  11. ↑ Identitarian movement: right-wing extremist group is committed to building the wall . In: The time . March 11, 2016, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed November 14, 2017]).
  12. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH: "Identitarian Movement": Wall in front of the polling station - no consequences. February 8, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Nik Afanasjew: Right-wing “Identitarians” show presence: The eerie house of Halle. In: The daily newspaper: taz. November 1, 2017. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Fight for the campus - how right-wing extremists agitate at the University of Halle. In: Malfunction reporter . October 26, 2017. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
  15. ↑ State Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Saxony-Anhalt: Report on the Protection of the Constitution 2016 . 1st edition. Magdeburg November 10, 2017, p. 50 ff .
  16. ↑ Contraculture. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Christian Fuchs, Astrid Geisler: Secret election workers of the AfD. In: Die Zeit , October 2, 2017.
  18. ^ A b mdr.de: Protest against right house project: Demo against Identitarian Movement in Halle | MDR.DE . ( mdr.de [accessed on November 13, 2017]). Protest against right house project: Demo against Identitarian Movement in Halle | MDR.DE ( Memento of the original from November 12, 2017 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.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mdr.de
  19. ↑ a b The identical house in Halle and how the city deals with it |. (No longer available online.) In: mdr.de. Archived from the original on November 8, 2017 ; accessed on November 8, 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 / www.mdr.de
  20. ↑ Alexander Schierholz: Property management instead of right-wing extremism: House of the Identitarian Movement in Halle sold. June 29, 2020, accessed June 29, 2020 .
  21. ↑ “It's about influencing people's minds” - The Institute for State Policy , bpb.de, July 7, 2016, accessed on November 7, 2017.
  22. ↑ Don't leave the campus to right-wing extremists! - HalleSpektrum.de - online magazine from Halle (Saale). HalleSpektrum.de - online magazine from Halle (Saale), October 6, 2017, accessed on November 8, 2017 .
  23. ^ Halle-Leobener Burschenschaft Germania , lsa-rechtsaussen.net, accessed on November 7, 2017
  24. ↑ Saxony-Anhalt state election: Everyone loses votes - just not the AfD ( memento of the original from November 9, 2017 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. , mdr.de, March 27, 2017. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mdr.de
  25. ↑ Michael Barthel, Felix Peter, Clemens Wagner: The tactics work. In: analysis & criticism . Edition 626, p. 18. Online on New Rights - Center of New Rights. Friday , accessed November 8, 2017 .
  26. ↑ Magdeburg: David Anbich, right-wing extremism office at Mit einer eV - Right-wing violence in Saxony-Anhalt. Right-wing violence in Saxony-Anhalt, accessed on November 8, 2017 .
  27. ↑ a b Anja Förtsch: Attack on Identitarian Movement: Is the situation in the neighborhood escalating? In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . ( mz-web.de [accessed on November 14, 2017]).
  28. ↑ Identity house project attacked in Halle. In: New Germany. Retrieved November 9, 2017 .
  29. ↑ House of Identitarian Movement attacked: residents' cars are damaged. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
  30. ↑ Marc Brandstetter: “Patriotic House Project” in Halle: AfD-Tillschneider and Identitarian Movement together under one roof. In: terminus on the right. September 22, 2017. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
  31. ^ Jan Schumann: Identitarian Movement - Police searched the training center of the right-wing extremists . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , November 13, 2017.
  32. ↑ Incident in the Harz cafeteria - Did identities in the cafeteria threaten students? In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . June 12, 2017 ( mz-web.de [accessed November 14, 2017]).
  33. ↑ Mitteldeutsche Zeitung: Escalation of violence: Identitarians attack police officers - they draw their weapons. November 21, 2017, accessed on September 10, 2018 (German).
  34. ↑ Attack on police officers: "New escalation level reached". In: MDR Saxony-Anhalt, November 22, 2017.
  35. ↑ Jan Schumann, Oliver Müller-Lorey: Escalation of violence. Identities attack police officers - they draw their guns . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , November 21, 2017.
  36. ↑ Video "Halle and the Identitarian Movement". (No longer available online.) In: MDR Sachsen-Anhalt Today. November 23, 2017, archived from the original on January 21, 2018 ; accessed on January 20, 2018 (German). 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 / www.ardmediathek.de
  37. ↑ Jan Schumann, Oliver Müller-Lorey: Escalation of violence Identitarians attack police officers - they draw their weapons. Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , November 21, 2017.
  38. ↑ Jan Schumann: Identitarian Movement. Right-wing activist convicted of attacking police officers. Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, June 26, 2020.
  39. ↑ Christian Fuchs: No castle for the identities. Time online , July 1, 2020
  40. ↑ AfD visit to Syria - "Those who court this regime disqualify themselves" . In: Zeit Online . March 7, 2018 ( zeit.de [accessed on May 11, 2018]).
  41. ↑ Police with large numbers on site - protest against identity movement in Halle . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . May 9, 2018 ( mz-web.de [accessed May 11, 2018]).
  42. ↑ 3,000 demonstrate against the Identitarian Movement: This is how the protest went on Saturday in Halle. Retrieved April 20, 2020 .
  43. ↑ IB demo July 20 - Citizens' festival for democracy moves to Halle's market. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . July 19, 2019, accessed April 20, 2020 .
  44. ↑ Marc Brandstetter: “Patriotic House Project” in Halle: AfD-Tillschneider and Identitarian Movement together under one roof. In: terminus on the right. September 22, 2017. Retrieved November 8, 2017 .
  45. ^ AfD politician opens office - that's why the right center will soon be under police protection . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . September 22, 2017 ( mz-web.de [accessed November 13, 2017]).

Coordinates: 51 ° 29 ′ 21.4 "  N , 11 ° 58 ′ 21"  E