Michael Kühnen

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Michael Aloysius Alfons Kühnen (born June 21, 1955 in Beuel ; † April 25, 1991 in Kassel ) was a leader of the German neo-Nazi scene in the 1980s.

Life

Kühnen grew up as an only child in a bourgeois-wealthy, liberal - Catholic family . He attended the Catholic Collegium Josephinum Bonn , where he graduated from high school in 1974 and was the student representative .

From 1974 onwards he served as a soldier in the German Armed Forces and studied at the University of the German Armed Forces in Hamburg , but was dismissed without notice in 1977 due to his right-wing extremist political activity as a lieutenant .

Political activity

Political beginnings and attempts at orientation

He has been involved in various right-wing extremist organizations since the late 1960s; at the age of 14, he was already active in the Young National Democrats (JN) and the NPD . Afterwards he worked in the Action Resistance , Action New Right (ANR), but at times he was also a member of the Junge Union and the Maoist KPD ( he still felt connected to the Cultural Revolution in 1989).

Kühnen's parents disapproved of their son's political activities.

Solidification in neo-Nazism

In 1976, during his time in the Bundeswehr, his neo-Nazi contacts intensified. After his release in 1977 he was exclusively active in the right-wing extremist political spectrum. On May 8, 1977, together with two other right-wing extremists, he founded a sub-organization of the neo-Nazi NSDAP organizational structure founded by Gary Lauck called "SA-Sturm Hamburg". From this sub-organization, the Organization Action Front National Socialists (ANS) emerged on November 26, 1977 , which it created nationwide publicity with an action organized by it in May 1978: Several ANS members posed with donkey masks and cardboard signs denying the Holocaust (“I donkey believe nor that Jews were gassed in German concentration camps ”) in front of the cameras of journalists. Kühnen quickly became the leading figure in the militant German neo-Nazi scene. His supporters at the time included u. a. Thomas Brehl ( Wehrsportgruppe Fulda), Christian Worch , Gottfried Küssel (who represented him during his imprisonment as the leader of the community of supporters of the New Front (GdNF)), Steffen Hupka and Arndt Heinz Marx . During his second imprisonment, after an internal association appeal to exterminate the "homosexuals, perverts and traitors" on May 26, 1981, the former ANS member Johannes Bügner (* 1955) was arrested by five ANS people in the Feldmark near Stemwarde due to "proven homosexuality " stabbed. Kühnen distanced himself from the fact and dedicated his 67-page brochure National Socialism and Homosexuality to Bügner, which he completed in 1986 . Kühnen headed the committee for the preparation of the celebrations for the 100th birthday of Adolf Hitler of the Collegium Humanum .

Convictions and bans

In 1978 he was sentenced to six months in prison for using anti-constitutional organization markings . This was followed on September 13, 1979 by a four-year prison sentence for sedition and dissemination of neo-fascist propaganda materials in the so-called Bückeburg trial . While in custody, he wrote a broad propaganda pamphlet, The Second Revolution . After his release from prison in 1982 he again took over the management of the ANS. This was banned on December 7, 1983 by the Federal Ministry of the Interior . Kühnen then went to France. In 1984 he was arrested there and extradited to Germany. In January 1985, Kühnen was sentenced to three years and four months in prison for distributing Nazi propaganda material . Kühnen received a five-hour visit from the Austrian poet Erich Fried in prison . A report by the Stasi that emerged in 2016 contains evidence that at the time of his release from prison in 1982 there was contact with the Lower Saxony constitutional protection agency.

Reaction to the bans

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Kühnen reacted to the ban on the ANS on December 7, 1983, supported by Thomas Brehl and Christian Worch , by first renaming the ANS / NA comradeships to “readership groups”. These were then united with other organizations in 1984 in the New Front (GdNF). Another successor organization was, among others, the right-wing extremist Freedom German Workers' Party (FAP). Kühnen also founded the military sports group Werwolf . In 1990 he wrote the Work Plan East , in which he described the development of militant right-wing extremist structures in the area of ​​the former GDR . The "Resistance Greeting", originally used by the Resistance Action , was adopted by him and later used in a media-friendly manner and referred to as the Kühnengruss . This should deliberately provoke without incurring criminal consequences, as would have been the case with the similar Hitler salute . He knew how to use the mass media to repeatedly get public for his politics. Kühnen succeeded in building up a loyal following as well as contacts to almost all neo-Nazi groups and parties at home and abroad.

In 1991 Michael Kühnen announced that he wanted to set up an international unit of volunteers to fight on the side of Iraq in the Second Gulf War .

Dissolution of the GdNF

During his imprisonment from 1985 onwards, a heated dispute broke out within the GdNF. Kühnen's internal rival Jürgen Mosler called for the extermination of all “pigs, sick people and perverts”. Every gay person is a “traitor to the people” and is jointly responsible for the spread of AIDS . The French "honorary member" Michel Caignet, editor of Gaie France , was also attacked and excluded . Mosler and others gave Kühnen notice "because of his commitment to homosexuality," according to right-wing extremism researcher Jens Mecklenburg . Other scientists also confirm Kühnen's homosexuality. Kühnen defended the compatibility of homosexuality with National Socialism and on September 1, 1986, together with his friends, declared that they were leaving the GdNF, which led to the division of the organization. In brochures and circulars he developed his theory of men's associations, which was based on Hans Blüher and Ernst Röhm :

“The formation of culture and state is based on order-like, male-union principles; The sexual activity of the 'national comrades' arises from the loving ability to devote themselves to the community of the national people and is not in contradiction to the new National Socialism. "

In his view, men should have learned culturally to use their “excess” sexuality in such a way that it is not harmful, but if possible even for the benefit of cultural communities ”; because for the man it is quite obviously "not his biological purpose to use his sexuality exclusively for reproduction". Kühnen saw a possibility of beneficial sexuality in "sexual relationship [s] with other men or sexually mature boys". Moreover, Kühnen denied that he had made an outing of his sexual orientation with his publications , since "only attitude and performance in combat count and nothing else - especially no private bed stories", and allegedly never made any public statements about his own sexual orientation.

The exit did not, however, noticeably diminish his influence on the neo-Nazi milieu. In January 1989, Kühnen was again proclaimed "Leader" of the FAP. Already physically marked, Kühnen took part in the “commemorations” for Rudolf Heß and the “Gauleitertreffen” in Fulda in 1990 as the “leader of the community of ideas of the New Front” .

Death and effects

After Kühnen died in hospital in 1991 as a result of his AIDS illness , the organization he had set up largely dissolved. However, the members continued to get involved in various other right-wing extremist groups. Christian Worch spreads the conspiracy theory that Kühnen was specifically infected with the HIV virus by means of a syringe after being extradited from France by the German authorities .

Kühnen was cremated and buried on January 3, 1992 in the Kassel West Cemetery. His funeral turned out to be problematic: Before his death, Kühnen had ordered in his will to be buried in Langen (Hesse) and forbade his family to attend to his funeral. Instead, he obliged his fiancée Esther Simone Wohlschläger (called "Lisa", from 1990 chairwoman of the German Women's Front ) and Christian Worch in writing to bring his ashes to Langen. For a long time, however, neither Lange nor other eligible cities were willing to have bold people buried with them. In April 1992 the urn was allegedly stolen from the West Cemetery in Kassel . A corresponding article by Michael Born in Spiegel TV Magazin , in which “ Autonome ” dug up the urn, was fake.

ideology

National Socialism

Kühnen openly confessed to National Socialism and thus disillusioned everyone who had believed that with the extinction of the war generation, the problem of right-wing radicalism in the Federal Republic would be dealt with on its own. In particular, he tied in with the social revolutionary currents within the NSDAP and, in particular, with Ernst Röhm's SA , whom he imitated. Kühnen openly represented positions of anti-Semitism , which he sometimes disguised as anti-Zionism . One of the “anti-Zionist campaigns” he founded openly confessed to National Socialist extermination anti-Semitism : “Without a solution to the Jewish question , no redemption of humanity”.

National Cultural Revolution

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As a counter-movement to the “cultural revolution” on the part of the 1968 movement , Michael Kühnen propagated a “ völkisch ” or “German cultural revolution” that was anti-Semitic against materialism and “ Americanism ”. The USA was portrayed as a puppet of Israel and Judaism and the “national cultural revolution” was described as a panacea against Americanism: “Americanism is the most extreme form of bourgeois-materialistic way of life [...] and thus the main force of today's decadence .” Materialism is one of them the "tool" for the "ultimate goals of Zionism in its struggle for world domination ".

Fonts

  • The second revolution. Faith and struggle. 1979.
  • National Socialism and Homosexuality. Own print, Paris 1986.
    • French: National-socialisme et homosexualité. Éditions Ars magna, Nantes 2004, ISBN 2-912164-33-8 .
  • Leadership between national community and elite thinking.
  • Introduction to the Nazi view of life.
  • The 25 point program of the NSDAP has been re-commented.
  • Lexicon of the New Front.
  • Political soldierhood: tradition and spirit of the SA.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The new neo-Nazi: Michael Kühnen . In: Die Zeit , No. 18/1978.
  2. ↑ a b c Christa Ritter: Ich, Kühnen - Germany's most feared Nazi explains itself. Interview. In: Tempo. February 1989, pp. 82-90. waahr.de
  3. ^ Bernhard Rabert : Left and Right Terrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany 1970–1990 . Bernard & Graefe, 1995, ISBN 3-7637-5939-5 , pp. 304 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  4. ↑ a b c d Thomas Grumke , Bernd Wagner (ed.): Handbook right-wing radicalism : people - organizations - networks from neo-Nazism to the middle of society . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-97559-1 , p. 273 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. ↑ Wulf Schmiese : We don't know enough . In: Die Zeit , No. 51/1997
  6. ^ Rainer Erb : Kühnen, Michael. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Volume 8: Supplements and Register . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-037932-7 , p. 90.
  7. ↑ a b Armin Pfahl-Traughber : Right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic . CH Beck, 2001, ISBN 3-406-47244-3 , pp. 55 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  8. ↑ Cyprian Blamires, Paul Jackson (ed.): World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia . tape 1 . ABC-CLIO, 2006, ISBN 1-57607-940-6 , pp. 368 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  9. ^ Andreas Schulze: Small parties in Germany: Rise and fall of non-established political associations . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-81326-8 , pp. 127 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  10. ↑ a b c d dust to powdered sugar . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 1991 ( online ).
  11. ^ Fabian Virchow : Donkey mask campaign (1978). In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 4: Events, Decrees, Controversies . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2011, p. 107 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  12. ↑ a b c d Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller: Man for Man - A biographical lexicon. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-518-39766-4 .
  13. ^ Christian Mentel: Collegium Humanum. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Organizations, institutions, movements . Volume 5. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-598-24078-2 , p. 115.
  14. ↑ Oliver Tolmein: In the first German trial against neo-Nazis, the judgments are pronounced . deutschlandfunk.de , September 13, 2004.
  15. ^ Rainer Erb : Kühnen, Michael. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Volume 8: Supplements and Register. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-037932-7 , p. 92 (accessed via De Gruyter online).
  16. ^ Henryk M. Broder : The Nazi, the Jew and the principle of vanity. Spiegel online , November 4, 2007.
  17. ^ Protection of the Constitution: Entangled with senior neo-Nazi Michael Kühnen. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. 22nd November 2016.
  18. ↑ Fabian Virchow: Against civilism: International relations and the military in the political conceptions of the extreme right . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2006, ISBN 3-531-15007-3 ( full text in the Google book search).
  19. ^ Jens Mecklenburg: Handbook of German right-wing extremism. Elefantenpress, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-88520-585-8 , p. 485.
  20. ↑ For example Richard Stöss : The Extreme Right in the Federal Republic - Development, Causes, Countermeasures. Opladen 1989, ISBN 3-531-12124-3 , p. 172.
  21. ↑ Quotation: Hergemöller 2001, Basis: Klaus Woischner: Michael Kühnen: Sexually active in men's associations. In: TAZ. October 13, 1986, p. 9.
  22. ↑ M. Kühnen: National Socialism and Homosexuality. Eigendruck, Paris 1986, p. 26f.
  23. ↑ M. Kühnen: National Socialism and Homosexuality. Eigendruck, Paris 1986, p. 27.
  24. ^ Gottfried Lorenz: Töv, di schiet ik an: Contributions to Hamburg's gay history . LIT Verlag, 2013, p. 402.
  25. ↑ Died - Michael Kühnen . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 1991 ( online ).
  26. ↑ Nick Wolfgang Greger: Gone Away Years - A Youth in Nazi Hate . epubli, 2012, p. 68.
  27. ↑ BT-Drs. 12/2103 : Answer of the Federal Government to the minor question by the MP Ulla Jelpke and the PDS / Linke Liste group , February 14, 1992.
  28. ↑ a b urn theft. In: Abendblatt.de . April 9, 1992, accessed July 9, 2015 .
  29. ↑ German Women's Front (DFF)
  30. ↑ Pietät Staub on powdered sugar , Der Spiegel November 25, 1991
  31. ↑ Wolfgang Gast: When reality is not real. In: taz.de . June 19, 2001. Retrieved July 9, 2015 .
  32. ↑ Thomas Pritzl: The fake factor. Kopaed, 2006, ISBN 3-938028-69-6 , p. 45 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  33. ^ Rainer Erb : Kühnen, Michael. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 8: Supplements and Register . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-037932-7 , p. 89 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
personal data
SURNAME Bold, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kühnen, Michael Aloysius Alfons
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German neo-Nazi, leader of the German neo-Nazi movement
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Bump
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1991
Place of death kassel