NSU watch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NSU-Watch is an independent watch blog that critically accompanies and documents the educational work on the right-wing extremist terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) and researches the background. It started its work in April 2013 before the start of the Munich NSU process , is run by a group of volunteers and supported by civil society initiatives. It is located at the anti-fascist press archive and education center Berlin (apabiz) and at the anti-fascist information, documentation and archive office in Munich (aida). It has received several awards for its work. There are country-specific subgroups.

Creation and supporters

The initiative for the establishment in 2012 was based on the fact that no comprehensive official protocol will be drawn up in the then impending criminal proceedings against Beate Zschäpe as a suspected NSU accomplice and four alleged assistants - and thus, despite the great political and historical importance, complete documentation for the interested public and later researchers would have been absent. NSU-Watch began its work on April 2, 2013, shortly before the start of the NSU trial , with the aim of promoting the clarification of the NSU and its actions, which is independent of official information, and of bringing the view of those affected to the fore move. The “pressure for effective interventions” for increased awareness should also grow.

Around a dozen anti-fascist and anti-racist groups and individuals from all over Germany have come together for NSU-Watch . Located is the project in two archival and educational settings, apabiz the Berlin and Munich aida The supporters include the anti-racist Education Forum Rhineland , the anti-fascist research team Dresden , the research network Women and right-wing and the magazines Antifaschistisches Fact Sheet , The Rights edge and Lotta .

Finance and Labor

NSU-Watch is mostly run by volunteers and is exclusively financed by donations. Two half posts for coordination and translations into Turkish and English (the latter discontinued at the end of 2013 due to low demand and high costs) are paid. The more than twenty participants have no legal background, but many have experience in process observation and knowledge of the NSU complex and right-wing extremism in general.

The core of the work is accompanying the NSU trial before the Munich Higher Regional Court . At least one representative from NSU-Watch was present on each of the more than 300 days of the trial, tweeted from the court hearing and prepared detailed minutes. The 40-page long notes for the respective day of the trial were then edited and made freely accessible in the online portal in around 12-page documents. NSU-Watch also documents the work of many parliamentary committees of inquiry on the NSU on site, including the second NSU committee of the Bundestag (since 2015). In 2014, two regional branches of NSU-Watch were founded, which document and critically monitor the work of the parliamentary investigative committees of the state parliaments in Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2015, further state projects were created for Baden-Württemberg and Saxony. Most recently, in August 2016, a regional group began to support the newly established Brandenburg investigative committee for NSU-Watch.

According to its own claim, the comprehensive protocols have “primarily documentary value and should enable other people to work on the topic. Its value is the level of detail and the restriction to facts, which distinguishes it from the currently good reporting in the media and makes it unique and indispensable. "Nevertheless," details could always be missing here ... that later turn out to be relevant ". The online portal was accessed 450 to 700 times a day in November 2013, according to the company's own information, so the number of retrieval of the German-language protocols was 350 to 1000 each, which is significantly higher than that of the English and Turkish translations.

In addition, analyzes and research on the ideological and personal background of the NSU core group are published.

Reception and awards

The journalist Petra Sorge reported in April 2013 that the activists involved had been subjected to attempts at intimidation by neo-Nazis . She called the project "nationwide unique" in its networking of various initiatives against right-wing extremism . In their unusual work as “civil society or research reporters”, they are, according to Sorge, “taken seriously”. According to the journalist Astrid Hansen, NSU-Watch is creating “an archive of contemporary history with tough detailed work”, which gives journalism the message: “You can tell great stories even without time pressure and sensationalism.” In July 2016, journalist Thomas Moser pointed out the importance that has a comprehensive log in this historical process - NSU-Watch "writes judicial history with it". In November 2016, the left newspaper Jungle World judged that NSU-Watch had started the intensive preoccupation of left-wing initiatives with the NSU complex, which had "become so large and heterogeneous" that it had achieved " movement character ". The “tireless and meticulous work” brought NSU-Watch “recognition from the media and many prizes”, but it also required “enormous capacities”.

NSU-Watch received several “significant” awards. In November 2013 he was awarded the Otto Brenner Prize for Media Project ; the laudation was given by Volker Lilienthal . The Otto Brenner Foundation pointed out that NSU Watch remedied the problematic admission of journalists to the NSU process by providing complete documentation, even for non-accredited persons; this is a “truly democratic service” that is provided “in an exemplary manner” - with “radical transparency and without the inevitable abbreviations in classic journalism”. Lilienthal emphasized the detail of the minutes: “Not a big moment is lost, not a profane one is forgotten.” One of the two special prizes for Journalist of the Year was awarded to NSU-Watch in February 2014; his work bears “recognizable fruit” and deserves “recognition and support”. In May 2014, NSU-Watch was awarded the 1st prize in the alternative media prize in the Internet category because the project - "rich in facts and precisely" - brought together information even after the process got out of the headlines. In October 2014 the initiative was honored with the Hans Frankenthal Prize of the Auschwitz Committee Foundation because it documents "in detail" and provides extensive information on things that hardly or not at all appear in the "" large "media". In June 2017, the Alliance for Democracy and Tolerance awarded NSU-Watch in the “ Active for Democracy and Tolerance ” competition .

The Hessian SPD chairman Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel campaigned for support for NSU-Watch in July 2015; the project makes "an important contribution to informing the public". The media scientist Tanja Thomas counted the Watchblog 2015 as one of the positive examples of process reporting - it belongs to "initiatives that can take a closer look and generate publicity." For the political scientist Bilgin Ayata , NSU-Watch has "meticulously documented" the Munich process. The social scientist Samuel Salzborn judged in 2016 that "civil society initiatives, above all NSU-Watch," had "made extensive knowledge" on the subject of NSU "accessible to a public debate".

In 2020 NSU-Watch was honored with the Grimme Online Award for continuous team performance. The reason given is: "NSU-Watch" is an excellent example of what lively, alert and committed civil society organizations are able to do via the Internet: consistently record grievances and transparently inform the public about them. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Thomas Moser: NSU trial: Protocols for eternity. In: Deutschlandfunk . March 24, 2016.
  2. ^ Background to the NSU-watch project. In: NSU-Watch. April 15, 2013; Alice Lanzke: NSU-watch: “We need a critical public”. In: Netz gegen Nazis . October 29, 2012 (conversation with Frank Metzger).
  3. ↑ Press release on the establishment of the independent observatory “NSU-Watch: Enlightenment and Interference”. In: NSU-Watch. Berlin and Munich, April 4, 2013.
  4. ↑ a b NSU-Watch: »Enlighten and meddle«! In: NSU-Watch (self-introduction).
  5. ↑ a b November 2013: Interim summary of the NSU-watch project. In: NSU-Watch. December 1st, 2013.
  6. ↑ a b c Astrid Hansen: “There is still research to be done” - The NSU process in minutes. In: Message . International magazine for journalism. January 27, 2014.
  7. ↑ Third 12.14 via NSU-Watch NRW. In: NSU-Watch NRW. November 27, 2014; Self-image. In: NSU-Watch Hessen. Retrieved January 25, 2017.
  8. ↑ Background. In: NSU-Watch Baden-Württemberg. Retrieved January 25, 2017.
  9. ↑ NSU Watch Saxony online! In: Akubiz.de. Retrieved January 25, 2017; NSU-Watch Saxony. Retrieved January 25, 2017.
  10. ↑ a b Bastian Pauly: NSU Watch: Citizens watch the protection of the constitution. In: Märkische Allgemeine . August 31, 2016; NSU Watch Brandenburg - behind the scenes. Retrieved January 25, 2017.
  11. ↑ Imke Schmincke, Jasmin Siri : NSU murders. In: Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz (Hrsg.): Lexicon of “Coping with the Past” in Germany: Debate and Discourse History of National Socialism after 1945. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Transcript, Bielefeld 2015, pp. 391-394, here p. 392 ; Felix Hansen: There's still a lot to be cleared up. In: Amnesty Journal . October 2016.
  12. ↑ Petra Sorge: “NSU Watch” blog - you take on rib breakers. In: Cicero . April 27, 2013.
  13. ↑ Thomas Moser: NSU-Watch: The protocol of the Zschäpe process. WDR 5 , curiosity is enough - the feature. July 8, 2016.
  14. ↑ Toni Kantorowicz: The observation left. In: Jungle World . No. 45, November 10, 2016.
  15. ↑ Media project award - NSU-watch initiative. ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2017 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. In: Otto-Brenner-Preis.de . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.otto-brenner-preis.de
  16. ↑ NSU-watch awarded! In: NSU-Watch. October 18, 2013 (with notification of the award from the Otto Brenner Foundation).
  17. ↑ The Celebration of Journalists of the Year. In: Medium magazine . 3rd February 2014.
  18. ↑ Press release 2014: Award winners. In: Alternative-Medienpreis.de (PDF).
  19. ^ NSU trial - May 2014. In: Netz gegen Nazis . May 1, 2014.
  20. ^ NSU-Watch is awarded the Hans Frankenthal Prize from the Auschwitz Committee Foundation. In: NSU-Watch. September 30, 2014 (with press release from the Auschwitz Committee Foundation).
  21. ^ Sonja Koppitz, Max Spallek : "NSU Watch" initiative awarded in Berlin.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Radio Eins , June 19, 2017 (conversation with Ulrich Jentsch).@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.radioeins.de  
  22. ↑ Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel: NSU-Watch informs the public about the process in Munich: special commitment. ( Memento of the original from January 24, 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. In: SchaeferGuembel.de. 3rd July 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.schaeferguembel.de
  23. ↑ Quoted from Nanett Bier: Journalists and the NSU Trial. In: From Politics and Contemporary History . No. 40, 2015, September 21, 2015.
  24. ^ Bilgin Ayata: Silencing the Present. A post-colonial criticism of the processing of the NSU complex. In: Aram Ziai (Ed.): Postcolonial Political Science. Theoretical and empirical approaches. Transcript, Bielefeld 2016, pp. 211–232, here p. 216, fn. 3.
  25. ^ Samuel Salzborn: Vigilantist right-wing terrorism. In: Sociopolis. ISSN  2509-5196 , September 14, 2016.
  26. ↑ above: Grimme Online Award 2020. The winners. Grimme Online Award website , accessed June 26, 2020.