Rudolf Hess Memorial March

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The Rudolf Hess Memorial March is a demonstration event of the German neo-Nazi scene that takes place every year around August 17th . Most of the demonstrations take place in Wunsiedel , some of which have been banned there, so that other cities are used.

History of the event

Just one day after Rudolf Heß's death in the Berlin-Spandau war crimes prison on August 17, 1987, demonstrations with small numbers of participants took place in Germany and Austria , for example in Hamburg , Berlin , Munich and Vienna , numerous slogans and an attack in Frankfurt against a United States Armed Forces vehicle . In addition, neo-Nazis besieged the cemetery in Wunsiedel in Franconia for two weeks in order not to miss the funeral, from which they were ultimately excluded.

In spring 1988, the first Rudolf Hess memorial march was registered by Berthold Dinter for August and organized by a group around the neo-Nazis Michael Kühnen and Christian Worch . Kühnen formulated the goal of never allowing Wunsiedel to rest. The event was initially banned, but was then enforced in court by the Hamburg lawyer Jürgen Rieger . About 120 neo and old Nazis took part in the memorial march on August 17, 1988. In 1989 a group of Belgian neo-Nazis took part in the demonstration for the first time. In the summer of 1990 the event counted around 1,600 participants.

Neo-Nazis marched through Wunsiedel in memory of Rudolf Hess .

This development also led to stronger protests from bourgeois and anti-fascist circles. Not least because of these counter-activities, after 1990 a demonstration ban was imposed over the entire district of Wunsiedel in the Fichtelgebirge , which forced the organizers to move to other cities. In 1991, around 3,000 people demonstrated in Bayreuth against the ban in Wunsiedel. A nationwide anti-fascist mobilization followed around 2500 people. In 1992, on the 5th anniversary of his death, an alternative march took place in Rudolstadt . in which the members of the NSU core group also took part. Together with the Saalfeld neo-Nazi Andreas Rachhausen , Thomas Dienel organized the Rudolf Hess memorial march, for which almost 2000 neo-Nazis from all over Germany traveled to Rudolstadt on August 15. According to the authors of the book Heimatschutz about the NSU complex, Stefan Aust and Dirk Laabs , the then 17-year-old Tino Brandt from Rudolstadt helped organize the demonstration.

In 1994 there were blockades and demonstrations nationwide against the central figures of the mobilization for the Hess marches such as Worch and Rieger. The police now also consistently prevented all attempts by the neo-Nazis to march in the Federal Republic on the occasion of the day of death. The neo-Nazi scene therefore sometimes moved to neighboring countries, for example to Luxembourg or in 1995 to Roskilde in Denmark , without being able to perform there successfully. Bans on demonstrations throughout Germany and over 500 arrests made public commemoration for the neo-Nazis more or less impossible in 1997. There were hardly any actions in the three following years. In the year 2000 there was finally no more parade at all.

When Jürgen Rieger registered the demonstration again in Wunsiedel in 2001 , it was banned in the first instance, but approved in an appeal by the Bavarian Administrative Court. In their assessment of the traditionally imposed ban on gatherings in the Wunsiedel district, the judges saw no danger to public safety and order that a memorial march would pose, and also referred to a persistent weakness in the anti-fascist counter-mobilization. The demonstrations in Wunsiedel were registered by Rieger on this train up to and including 2010. Between 2001 and 2004 there were again demonstrations with three to four-digit numbers of participants.

The rally has been banned since 2005. All court instances saw the march as a disturbance of the “public peace in a way that violated the dignity of the victims” and that “approved, glorified or justified the National Socialist rule of violence and arbitrariness” ( sedition , Section 130 (4) StGB). Attempts by the organizers to hold alternative events were also unsuccessful. In 2009, the Federal Constitutional Court finally passed the so-called Wunsiedel decision , which confirmed the ban on marches.

After Jürgen Rieger's death in 2009, however, a “memorial march in honor of Rieger” was registered and ultimately approved. Under the motto “The fame of the dead lasts forever”, around 850 neo-Nazis marched through Wunsiedel and hoped to install a replacement event for the Hess marches in this way. In 2010 this event was re-registered and approved. There were 150 people present who were not allowed to pass the cemetery where Hess was buried.

Rudolf Heß's grave was closed on July 20, 2011 after the lease expired. On August 13, 2011, around 20 neo-Nazis arrived in Wunsiedel, and the police enforced the ban on events.

On November 17, 2012, around 230 right-wing extremists gathered in Wunsiedel. They faced around 350 counter-demonstrators. According to the regulations, any reference to the event from Hess was prohibited, but the speeches of some neo-Nazis contained corresponding associations. On November 16, 2013, around 220 neo-Nazis traveled to Wunsiedel (subject to the same conditions). In a speech, Erich Priebkes was remembered, who had recently died under house arrest in Rome. By referring to Priebke as the "oldest" and "last prisoner of war", there was again an allusion to Hess.

In 2014, the citizens' initiative “Wunsiedel ist bunt” worked this year instead of the now banned Free Network South from the party Der III. The event that was registered as a "charity run" and put it under the motto " Right against Right ". For each of the march covered feet ten euros were the dropouts organization Exit donated. The opponents of the event had collected the money in advance. The counter-demonstrators also showed banners with the inscription “The most involuntary donation run in Germany”, “In donation step march off” or “Final spurt instead of final victory”.

The demonstration began in November 2015 with around 230 participants from the neo-Nazi party “Der III. Away “only at 4 pm when dusk sets in. Approx. 500 counter-demonstrators had gathered, and videos about the previous year's fundraising run were projected onto the walls via a projector.

In November 2016, between 200 and 250 supporters of the “III. Away ”in the dark in Wunsiedel. The speeches were dedicated to racist definitions of the term people and the embodiment of a so-called “ancestral chain” in each individual. Speeches and a banner reminded of Jürgen Rieger, the former organizer of the marches, but the inscription was a chorus line from a song by the right-wing extremist band Stahlgewitter dedicated to Rudolf Heß - again a circumvention of the ban on an explicit reference to an event. Up to 400 counter-demonstrators gathered in the city center.

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Hess's death in 2017, around 800 neo-Nazis wanted to demonstrate at the former war crimes prison in Berlin-Spandau. Under the motto “Murder does not become statute-barred”, they followed up on the conspiracy theory of Hess being murdered by the Allies. Around 2,000 counter-demonstrators blocked the march after 150 meters. Because of an arson attack on the railway, around 250 neo-Nazis did not reach the demonstration site and instead held spontaneous meetings in Falkensee .

On November 17, 2019, The III. Away a torchlight march, called “Heroes' Remembrance”, in which around 200 participants marched through Wunsiedel. The party chairman Klaus Armstroff defamed the victims of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist group and said that no memorial would be erected for Rudolf Hess because he was “not a drug dealer” and “not gay” and “did not belong to an ethnic minority”. Around 400 people took part in a counter-event. According to the organizers, around 350 participants came to another counter-demonstration by the Antifa under the motto “Not long torches”. Around 90 neo-Nazis, mainly from the Holocaust denier scene, gathered in Schleusingen, Thuringia, under the motto “Heroes' Remembrance”. The meeting was organized by the right-wing extremist Alliance Zukunft Hildburghausen . A good three dozen people met for a prayer for peace and a counter rally. Due to an official requirement, only 20 torches were allowed in the right-wing extremist march and the district administration had forbidden the neo-Nazis to pass the Holocaust memorial in front of the old synagogue .

literature

  • Thomas Dörfler, Andreas Klärner: The "Rudolf Hess Memorial March" in Wunsiedel. Reconstruction of a nationalist phantasm. In: Mittelweg 36 issue 4/2004, ISSN  0941-6382 , pp. 74-91, online .
  • Patrick O'Hara, Daniel Schlueter: The myth dies last. Neo-Nazi commemoration, the war criminal Rudolf Hess and anti-fascist discussion. Hamburg 2002 (council - series of anti-fascist texts , ZDB -ID 2078494-6 ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.rechtsextremismusforschung.de/Doerfler-Klaerner_wunsiedel2004.pdf
  2. ↑ " The Right Edge " No. 18, July / August 1992
  3. ↑ http://www.netz-gegen-nazis.de/artikel/rudolf-hess
  4. ↑ https://www.antifainfoblatt.de/artikel/rudolf-he%C3%9F-%C2%BBgedenkmarsch%C2%AB-mu%C3%9Fte-ausfallen
  5. ↑ https://www.boell.de/de/demokratie/demokratie-entwicklung-der-neonazi-szene-in-thueringen-13361.html
  6. ^ Stefan Aust: Heimatschutz. Pantheon Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-641-09641-0 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  7. ↑ Hans Holzhaider: End of a Nazi pilgrimage site. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . online, July 20, 2011.
  8. ↑ The police stop the Nazi information booth. In: Frankenpost , August 14, 2011
  9. ↑ Thomas Witzgall : Wunsiedel: Neo-Nazis can organize “hero commemorations” undisturbed. www.endstation-rechts-bayern.de, November 15, 2016
  10. ^ Ney Sommerfeld: Rudolf Hess March blocked. In: Malfunction reporter . August 20, 2017. Retrieved August 21, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Jonas Miller, Henrik Merker: Neo-Nazis mock NSU victims during torch-lit marches. Störungsmelder / blog.zeit.de, November 17, 2019