Thorsten Heise

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Thorsten Heise, 2018

Thorsten Heise (born June 23, 1969 in Göttingen ) is a German militant neo-Nazi , leading activist of the free comradeship scene and member of the federal executive committee of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) . He is the publisher of the magazine People in Motion & Der Reichsbote . From February 2017 to November 2018 he was state chairman of the NPD Thuringia .

Activities in right-wing extremist organizations and parties

Heise began his neo-Nazi career in the Freedom German Workers' Party (FAP) , in which he quickly rose to become a leading functionary and state chairman of the party in Lower Saxony . He often appeared and still appears as a speaker, sometimes also as a registrant and organizer at neo-Nazi marches. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution , Heise also worked as a “Croatian mercenary” on the Croatian side in the war in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s . After the FAP was banned in 1995 and his release from prison in 1997, Heise founded the neo-Nazi “Kameradschaft Northeim ” and became its leader. The "comradeship evenings" took place in his house in Northeim. In December 1999, he acquired the former manor house belonging to the von Hanstein family in Fretterode in Eichsfeld, Thuringia, on the border with Lower Saxony and Hesse , which at the time of purchase had been used as a nursing home and retirement home, and after being released again in October 2002, he moved there . Initially, he stated that he only wanted to live in the house with almost 600 square meters of living space and a plot of 2,000 square meters. However, after a short time, meetings between the Northeim Comradeship, which he continued to run, and the newly established Eichsfeld Comradeship, also held by him, were held there.

Heise next to Jörg Hähnel (right) at the NPD federal party conference in 2006

Heise has been getting closer to the NPD since around 2003 and had numerous discussions with party leaders Udo Voigt and Holger Apfel . Together with 13 other neo-Nazis, he was designated as an informant for the NPD ban proceedings . In September 2004 he joined the party and was elected as a member of the national executive committee at the national party congress of the NPD. Heise is considered to be primarily responsible for the fact that the 30th NPD federal party conference on 30./31. October 2004 took place in the Thuringian Leinefelde in Eichsfeld. At this party congress, other comradeship leaders active throughout Germany such as Ralph Tegethoff and Thomas Wulff ("Steiner") joined the NPD. The prominent neo-Nazis wanted to contribute to the creation of a “popular front from the right” and act as a mediator between the party and the militant comradeship scene. The NPD party executive welcomed the entry of the neo-Nazis with a declaration “Popular front instead of group selfishness”. Heise, Wulff and Tegethoff were also nominated as candidates for the party's federal executive committee. Since the latter withdrew their candidacy, Heise was accepted into the federal board as an assessor in the first round of elections with 64.7 percent of the votes. Here he heads the “Free Comradeships Unit”. From April 2005 he was also an assessor on the board of the regional association of the NPD Thuringia.

For the 2005 Bundestag election , Heise stood for the NPD in fourth place on the state list and as a direct candidate for the Eichsfeld - Nordhausen - Unstrut-Hainich-Kreis I constituency. He got 3.3% of the first votes. In the local elections in Thuringia in 2009 , Heise was the top candidate of the NPD in the Eichsfeld district. The NPD Eichsfeld received 3.3% of the votes, with which Heise, as a representative of the NPD, won a seat in the Eichsfeld district council. On March 2, 2018 - shortly before the end of the deadline - Heise applied as a candidate for election to the district administrator of the Eichsfeld district. His application was rejected by the election committee on March 13th because there were doubts about Heise's loyalty to the constitution. There were also formal obstacles, because the NPD had not kept the party-internal summons for the party-internal election meeting.

Heise is also said to have been the coordinator for the neo-Nazi scene in South Africa . Military training is said to have taken place there.

As the research platform EXIF ​​- Recherche & Analyze reports, Heise is supposed to be Combat 18's “crystallization figure and spiritus rector” .

Convictions for relevant offenses

Heise has a multiple criminal record for aggravated assault , breach of the peace , coercion and sedition, as well as using symbols of unconstitutional organizations . In 1989 he tried to run a Lebanese refugee over with his car. He went into hiding for the upcoming trial in 1991, but was caught shortly afterwards in Berlin. In 1990 he led an attack by 80 neo-Nazis on the inner city youth center (JUZI) in Göttingen. He was sentenced to eight months in prison after shooting schoolchildren with a gas pistol at a school graduation ceremony in 1994. In addition, there are violations of the Assembly Act such as B. 1996 a fine of 2,700 DM because he appeared in a forbidden uniform at the " Rudolf Hess Memorial March " in August 1993. In 2000 he was sent to prison again for a year and a half because he assaulted police officers in 1997 on a “Father's Day tour”. In February 2006, he was sentenced to one year suspended prison sentence. So far, Heise had a criminal record for grievous bodily harm, coercion and breach of the peace. In July 2007 he was sentenced again to six months' probation for sedition by the Mühlhausen district court. In October 2007 about 100 police officers searched the rooms of Heise and two other NPD members because of the production and distribution of right-wing extremist music. In May 2008, the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court confirmed two incidents of sedition.

After he had already been sentenced in December 2007, the conviction was issued in August 2008 for incitement to hatred for the distribution of CDs that incite "hatred of certain ethnic groups". The judge said it was "bad, disgusting texts" and Heise was "unteachable". The sentence was eleven months probation, two hundred hours of community work and a fine of € 15,000, which he is said to have earned with the CDs. This is his twelfth sentence in total.

Activities in the right-wing extremist music scene

Heise has also been active in the right-wing extremist music scene for a long time. He organizes numerous neo-Nazi concerts with up to 1000 participants. In Northeim he ran a "wholesaler for audio and video media, gifts, military clothing and shoes, camping articles" since December 1998. After moving to Fretterode in Thuringia, Heise founded the right-wing extremist mail order company and the label "WB Records" or "WB Versand" ("Witwe Bolte" - Shipping). Here primarily bands are sold that belong to or are close to the " Blood and Honor " network , which is banned in Germany . Heise has particularly close ties to bands and “Blood and Honor” activists from Scandinavia. In 2003 Heise was targeted by the Thuringian judiciary. Investigators had intercepted a shipment of around 5,000 CDs with inflammatory content from Thailand at Frankfurt Airport . According to the investigating authority, Heise is said to have been the buyer of the delivery. During a raid that took place at the same time in the spring of 2003, the relevant order documents as well as weapons and ammunition were found on the Heises property. A year earlier, several thousand CDs with inflammatory texts that had also been produced in Thailand were confiscated from him. The trade in Fretterode is officially registered as a "wholesaler for audio and video media, gifts and military clothing".

Other sound carriers produced for WB-Versand were indexed in Germany by the Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People due to their racist and inciting content . Heise is one of the masterminds of the schoolyard CD project , in which 50,000 CDs with right-wing rock and neo-Nazi propaganda were to be distributed nationwide free of charge to young people and children near schoolyards and youth facilities. He supported the major neo-Nazi events in Thuringia, such as the Festival of the Nations in Jena or Rock for Germany in Gera, as a sponsor, and each operated his own stands with his dispatch. Heise adopted the concept of the festival for the so-called “Eichsfelder Heimattag”.

In another raid on his property in October 2007, the investigators found a submachine gun, a machine gun and a pistol in addition to sound carriers containing prohibited right-wing extremist content. For this reason, the charge of violating the War Weapons Control Act was added to his case. At the same time, the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor's office initiated an investigation against Heise as the alleged author of the CD Geheime Reichssache by the neo-Nazi band Kommando Freisler .

Heise was the organizer of the "Schild und Schwert" festival on 20./21. April 2018 and on 2/3 November 2018 in Ostritz, East Saxony . About 1,000 right-wing extremist participants came to this scene meeting on the German-Polish border. He organized this event again on June 21, 2019.

The monument to the Waffen SS in Marienfels

In early 2006 came Heise again nationally in the headlines when it was revealed that he in 1971 built on his private estate in Fretterode and 2004 destroyed by unidentified memorial from Marienfels for the " 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler " and " 12th SS Panzer Division 'Hitler Youth' ”wants to rebuild. According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the project was successfully completed in June.

NSU support

After an interrogation by the BKA in December 2012, Thorsten Heise is on a list “with proven contacts to perpetrators or accused” in the NSU trial . Relevant address books, tapes and an e-mail address of Ku Klux Klan member Thomas Richter were found at Heise's house search .

Contact with Björn Höcke

Heise has been well known since around 2008 with Björn Höcke , who lives in Bornhagen , six kilometers away . After he was accused in 2015 of having contributed to Heise's magazine Volk in Bewegungs & Der Reichsbote under the pseudonym " Landolf Ladig " , today's Thuringian state chairman of Alternative für Deutschland denied having ever written for NPD papers, but refused to give an affirmation in lieu of oath , as requested by the AfD federal board. Heise himself also denied Höcke's identity with "Ladig" and only confirmed occasional contacts with Höcke later. In 2018, two citizens of Bornhagen swore that Heise had visited Höcke at home several times and helped him move.

Web links

Commons : Thorsten Heise  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Printed matter 19/1502 of the German Bundestag, PDF file
  2. ↑ a b Answer of the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior to the major inquiry of the Left Party. PDS - printed matter 4/1171 - right-wing extremism and democratic counter-resistance of December 2, 2005 , p. 21 ( PDF , approx. 103 KB). On die-linke-thl.de, accessed on January 8, 2018
  3. ↑ a b Answer of the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior to the major inquiry from the Left Party. PDS - printed matter 4/1171 - right-wing extremism and democratic counter-resistance of December 2, 2005 , p. 3 ( PDF , approx. 103 KB). On die-linke-thl.de, accessed on January 8, 2018
  4. ^ Editorial collective »NIP-Thüringen«: May 2013 - Third neo-Nazi festival of NPD functionary Thorsten Heise in Leinefelde . On July 8, 2010 at nip-thueringen.de, accessed on August 4, 2011
  5. ↑ Eichsfeld: NPD applicants are not allowed to run as district administrator , on thueringer-allgemeine.de, accessed on April 10, 2018
  6. ↑ a b René Heilig: Notes on running tape . On April 20, 2013 at neue-deutschland.de, accessed on January 8, 2018
  7. ^ "Combat 18" Reunion , EXIF - Research & Analysis , July 16, 2018
  8. ↑ Thuringian General of August 9, 2007
  9. ↑ NPD board member convicted of sedition . On July 4, 2007 from spiegel.de, accessed on January 8, 2018
  10. ^ Nürnberger Nachrichten of October 31, 2007; as well as in: Frankfurter Rundschau v. November 10, 2007, p. 3.
  11. ↑ taz, May 24, 2008, p. 5
  12. ↑ DIE WELT, December 15, 2007, No. 293, p. 40
  13. ↑ DIE WELT, August 29, 2008, No. 203, p. 40
  14. ↑ Leipziger Volkszeitung, May 8, 2009, p. 3, Osterländerausgabe
  15. ^ Johannes Grunert: Registered neo-Nazi music festival in Saxony for several days . On December 15, 2017 from blog.zeit.de, accessed on January 8, 2018;
    Martín Steinhagen, Hanning Voigts: Neo-Nazis storm the province . On January 8, 2018 from fr.de, accessed on January 8, 2018
  16. ↑ Kai Budler: Heise wants to establish a right-wing rock festival . February 6, 2012 from publikative.org, accessed May 4, 2013
  17. ^ Andreas Speit: NPD board with submachine gun . On October 31, 2007 from taz.de, accessed on August 4, 2011
  18. ↑ sz-online: The Festival “Shield and Sword” . In: SZ-Online . ( sz-online.de [accessed April 24, 2018]).
  19. ^ [1] Tagesspiegel, Neo-Nazi Festival
  20. ^ Christiane Kohl, Hans Leyendecker: Old acquaintances . On December 16, 2011 from sueddeutsche.de, accessed on January 8, 2018
  21. ↑ "Nobody dares to approach Höcke". Retrieved March 26, 2019 .
  22. ↑ Andreas Kemper: In the service of a large "accounting" , in: der Freitag , edition 26/2019, accessed on July 4, 2019.
  23. ↑ Severin Weiland, Christina Hebel: Alleged contact with the NPD: AfD country chief Höcke rejects an affidavit. Spiegel, April 29, 2015
  24. ^ Hannes Vogel: Old comrades. Time, September 13, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Heise, Thorsten
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German militant neo-Nazi, activist of the free comradeship scene and member of the national board of the NPD
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1969
PLACE OF BIRTH Goettingen