Hermann Niermann Foundation

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The Hermann Niermann Foundation is named after the Düsseldorf businessman and industrialist Hermann Niermann , who was born in 1905 and received political asylum in Switzerland in 1942 . The private law foundation was established in 1977, is a non-profit organization and supports German minorities in Europe.

history

Founded until 1987

As early as the early 1970s, Niermann made the decision to use the assets generated by his parents' company to set up a foundation to promote German minorities. To this end, in 1976 he consulted the Austrian South Tyrol activist Norbert Burger , chairman of the right-wing extremist NDP and involved in terrorist activities. In 1971 he was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in Italy. It is unclear to what extent Niermann was aware of Burger's extremist activities, but he himself never made a secret of his German nationalism. After the founder's death in 1985, his partner Margarete Sänger took over the chairmanship of the foundation. While that prevented the Ministry of Interior of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia a vocation Norbert Burgers in the foundation bodies, however, the Foundation got into this time "largely under the control of in the Foundation Board of Trustees elected sympathizers of Dr. Citizens who concealed from foundation funds and with conspiratorial intentions enforced the promotion of people, measures and institutions that were personally or politically close to them ”.

Burgers confidante within the foundation included Herwig Nachtmann , former editor-in-chief of the right-wing extremist Aula magazine, Gernot Mörig, former federal leader of the right-wing extremist association Heimattreuer Jugend, and Düsseldorf anesthetist Erhard Hartung, who was also absent in Italy in 1970 because of his involvement in explosives attacks had been sentenced to life imprisonment. Funds diverted from subsidies went to various minority parties, but also to extremist organizations such as the Alsatian separatist group Black Wolves . Considerable sums of money were also secretly transferred to South Tyrol.

1987 to 1993

Although the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had been aware of the connection to international right-wing extremists since 1976, the authorities did not intervene until the end of 1986 when the irregularities in the allocation of funds caused the President of the Düsseldorf administrative district to appoint a state commissioner to temporarily manage the foundation. During this time, the Ministerialrat in the then Federal Ministry for Internal German Relations , Uwe Stiemke , was elected to the office of chairman of the board. Lorenz Paasch, a member of the party of German-speaking Belgians , became managing director . In early 1988 the administrator was withdrawn and the foundation regained its sovereignty. The administrative restructuring of the foundation was thus given, but the dismissal of Norbert Burger's comrades-in-law demanded by the State Commissioner did not initially take place. The latter refused to resign from the board of trustees. Departing members were replaced by other confidants so that the foundation could continue to be controlled by him.

Since 1993

This situation dragged on until the Düsseldorf government president set up an emergency board at the end of 1993. Only then could the people from Norbert Burger's environment be permanently removed from the foundation's committees. Uwe Stiemke is still the CEO today. The Chairman of the Board of Trustees has been the Dane Peter Iver Johannsen since 1993. He is also a functionary of the Federal Union of European Ethnic Groups and of the Association for Germans Abroad . Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees has also been Joseph Dries, a member of the German-speaking Belgians' party since 1993, and Oliver Paasch, head of cabinet of the Education Minister of the German-speaking Community of Belgium , since 2004 . The latter is the son of the former managing director Lorenz Paasch mentioned above.

Objective and funding activity

The aim of the foundation is the ideal and material promotion of international understanding by supporting the [...] interests of ethnic minorities and ethnic groups combined with the preservation, teaching and dissemination of the German language and culture [...] in Europe and the promotion of the down-to-earth Customs and folk art . Social, cultural and educational institutions as well as scientific institutions are supported. The foundation also awards grants to members of sponsored minorities. The statutes prohibit funding outside of minority areas. Exceptions to this are supra-regional or supranational minority associations, whose work is to be regarded as unrestrictedly eligible for funding.

The total amount of funds paid out amounts to around 1 to 1.5 million euros per year, a large part of which goes to German-speaking minority regions in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland (for Kashubians and Germans in the former Upper Silesia), France and Slovakia. After the foundation's funding practice caused a scandal in the German-speaking Community of Belgium and led to the establishment of a committee of inquiry in 1994, funding is no longer given there. Among the minority associations supported are the Federal Union of European Ethnic Groups and the Federation of German North Schleswig-Holstein .

evaluation

In assessing the activity, a clear distinction must be made between the period before 1987, the cleaning phase from 1987 to 1993 and the period after 1993. Before 1987 one can clearly speak of direct political influence and support of right-wing extremist groups, which the foundation itself does not deny. Even if legal funding activities can be assumed after 1993, there are critics who object that the foundation's promotion of "Germanness abroad" directly or indirectly strengthens the autonomy efforts of the German-speaking minorities and thus weakens the respective states contributes to the benefit of German influence. In this context, reference is also made to the institutional connections of the foundation and the personal contacts of its managers to associations and parties that directly promote such attempts at autonomy, as well as to positions within the German Interior Ministry.

swell

  1. ^ Quote from the Foundation's website

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