Military sports group Hoffmann

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The military sports group Hoffmann was a neo-Nazi terrorist organization that was banned in January 1980. It was the largest and best known of the right-wing extremist military sports groups (WSG) active in the Federal Republic of Germany .

story

Ermreuth Castle

In 1973 the graphic artist Karl-Heinz Hoffmann founded the military sports group Hoffmann named after him . From 1974 onwards, the Almoshof Palace in Nuremberg served as the headquarters of the WSG and, from 1978, the Ermreuth Palace near Neunkirchen am Brand .

organization

The WSG Hoffmann was a paramilitary organization based on the Führer principle and described itself as a “tightly managed voluntary association organized according to military criteria”. Members were only accepted after a positive evaluation of an application for membership, after a “completed security check” and “longer observation period”. The members had to submit to an organized decision-making process. Hoffmann was the WSG's only "decision-making body" and had unrestricted authority.

The organization and activities of the WSG extended beyond Bavaria. The military sports group maintained several local groups, such as Sturmabteilung 7 in Frankfurt am Main , which belongs to the WSG . Hoffmann himself gave references to comrades in Bonn , Cologne and Tübingen .

From January 1979 Hoffmann published the magazine Kommando - newspaper for European volunteers , which called itself the "WSG newspaper".

On June 16, 1981, Hoffmann was arrested at Frankfurt Airport and charged with various offenses. For counterfeiting of money, deprivation of liberty, dangerous bodily harm and violations of the Arms and Explosives Act, he was sentenced in 1984 by the Nuremberg-Fürth district court to a prison sentence of nine years and six months, which he served in Bayreuth . He was released from prison in 1989 because of good conduct and “favorable social prognosis”. The WSG had meanwhile become a myth in the neo-Nazi scene; There are, for example, T-shirts with the likeness of the “boss”, as Hoffmann called himself, referring to Ernst Röhm .

Content profile

Ideologically, the WSG presented itself as a political force that rejected parliamentary democracy and its representatives and saw itself as the spearhead of an overthrow.

In a first manifesto of the movement for the realization of the Rational Pragmatic Social Hierarchy , Hoffmann formulated 19 guiding principles. In it he confessed that he had "completely lost all trust in the ideologies, government and economic forms offered to the world so far". As a consequence he called for “a radical change in the overall structure in all areas”. The existing system was to be replaced by a “leadership structure based on the performance and selection principle”, with governmental power “coming from a group comprised of top management”. In this “national community serving” form of government, the members of the government should be anonymous. Elections would be forbidden, trade unions and churches would be disempowered.

activities

The military sports group Hoffmann first appeared in public from 1974. For example, the members took over the security of various right-wing extremist events. Violent clashes broke out in several places, for example on December 4, 1976 on the occasion of an event organized by the right-wing extremist university ring of Tübingen students in the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen between stewards from WSG Hoffmann and counter-demonstrators. Several counter-demonstrators were injured and had to be treated in hospital. At a "Hitler memorial service" organized by the National Socialists / National Activists (ANS / NA) on July 22, 1978 in LentföhrdenIn Schleswig-Holstein, members of the WSG Hoffmann, ANS / NA and NSDAP / AO supporters fought a battle with the police.

The military sports group Hoffmann quickly developed into the largest German military sports group, which had branches throughout Germany. Many members of the WSG had previously been active in the Wiking Youth . The Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann had a model for other similar ideologically oriented groups, such as that of Michael Bold launched Wehrsportgruppe werewolf .

financing

The WSG Hoffmann was financed by donations. For this purpose, Hoffmann founded a circle of friends in 1976 to promote the military sports group Hoffmann . The President Bruno Weigand described the aim of the Circle of Friends as follows:

“The WSG Hoffmann troop maintains troops in many cities in Germany and Austria and maintains contacts with many related associations. The indicated scope makes it clear that the maintenance of the WSG Hoffmann troop requires material resources that go far beyond the possibilities of a single person. For this reason, a «Friends of the Defense Sports Group Hoffmann» set itself the task of organizing the material prerequisites for the maintenance and expansion of the WSG. "

In response to a parliamentary question in March 1978 regarding the financing of the WSG, the Bavarian state government confirmed the financing via the Freundeskreis, which consists of around 400 people, and replied that they saw no way of preventing this financing.

According to Reinhard Opitz , Anette Linke and two author collectives, Gerhard Frey was also a member of the support group. According to Rainer Fromm, Reinhard Opitz's claim regarding Frey's membership could not be "verified"; Frey was never listed as a member on the invitations from the Freundeskreis. However, Frey paid Hoffmann a fine of DM 8,000 in 1977; At that time, the WSG provided hall protection for DVU events in several cases .

Prohibition

The WSG Hoffmann was banned as anti-constitutional on January 30, 1980 by the Federal Minister of the Interior Gerhart Baum and officially dissolved. A lawsuit against this ruling was dismissed by the Federal Administrative Court. The court found that the aims and activities of this association indicated its intention to undermine the constitutional order of the Federal Republic of Germany and that it opposed this order. The Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Gerold Tandler, relativized the dangerousness of the WSG and named as the actual reason for the prohibition the concern about the German reputation, which is permanently discriminated [sic!] Abroad by the half-crazy spinners .

After the ban, 18 truckloads of material were seized during house searches according to official information in three federal states. Among them were z. B. Propaganda material and steel helmets as well as weapons such as carbines, pistols, ammunition for these weapons, bayonets and hand grenades. On the day of the ban on January 30, 1980, the WSG had around 400 members.

After the ban

After the ban in January 1980, part of the group moved to Lebanon and began to build an armed group based on the Führer principle . Hoffmann had good contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Via the partner organization Unified Security Apparatus under the leadership of Abu Ijad , the PLO made part of the area available to the military sports group abroad in the Bir Hassan camp in the south of Beirut . The aim of the WSG abroad active in Lebanon was to fight the state order in the Federal Republic of Germany through acts of terrorism and to prepare the ground for a dictatorship.

On September 26, 1980, Gundolf Köhler , a member of WSG Hoffmann, carried out a bomb attack on the Munich Oktoberfest , in which 13 people, including Köhler himself, were killed and 211 were injured, some seriously. A direct involvement of Hoffmann and other WSG members could not be proven. There are still doubts about Köhler's sole perpetrator. Shortly after the attack, explosive tools similar to those used to build the Oktoberfest bomb were found in the homes of former WSG members. During a search in Ermreuth Castle, among other things, 12-page bomb building instructions were found.

On December 19, 1980 the Jewish publisher and former chairman of the Israelite religious community in Nuremberg, Shlomo Levin , and his partner Frieda Poeschke were shot in Erlangen by Uwe Behrendt , a member of the military sports group Hoffmann. Levin had previously publicly warned against the German neo-Nazi scene and especially against Hoffmann. The murder weapon, a Beretta machine pistol , belonged to Hoffmann; Hoffmann's wife Franziska found the glasses at the scene. Uwe Behrendt then fled to Lebanon. On September 16, 1981, he committed suicide in a Lebanese military camp. In later trials, members of the military sports group reported hard drill, cruel torture and Hoffmann's plans to murder a public prosecutor. Although the Federal Prosecutor General Kurt Rebmann declared the military sports group active in Lebanon abroad a terrorist organization in 1981 , the Federal Court of Justice prevented further investigations and criminal proceedings on the grounds that only the group “which exists within the territorial scope of the Basic Law” may be prosecuted as a terrorist organization.

The so-called "Hepp Kexel Group" is formed around the former WSG members Odfried Hepp and Walter Kexel , which carried out five bank robberies in 1982 and then carried out several car bomb attacks on members of the US armed forces in Germany.

Entanglement of secret services

In a 1976 leaflet by the Friends of the Hoffmann Group to promote the military sports group , right-wing extremist Peter Weinmann was named as the contact address for a WSG information center in Bonn . Weinmann had worked as undercover agent Werner for the Cologne Office for the Protection of the Constitution, according to his own statements from 1968 to 1977, and according to his Stasi files up to around 1986. This became known in the course of his court proceedings in Koblenz in 1994. The triple agent had to answer because of his work for the Stasi as an unofficial employee of IM Römer from 1980 and was charged with treason in 1995Sentenced to nine months probation. As early as 1973, Weinmann, in consultation with Hoffmann, sold the first film about the WSG to the WDR, Monitor editorial office, for a fee of 400 DM.

Since 1982 the Stasi led Odfried Hepp as IM , whom they helped to escape in 1982 after several terrorist attacks. According to research by Regine Igel , the Stasi had won members of the Hoffmann military sports group for cooperation since the late 1970s.

In February 2015, in response to a request from the Left Party in the Bundestag, the Federal Government announced that both the Federal Intelligence Service and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had so-called "source reports", i.e. reports from informants , relating to the Oktoberfest attack. In response to the German government's refusal to provide information about the use of informers by German secret services, the parliamentary groups of the Left and the Greens filed a complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe in May 2015 . The Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection responded in April 2016In response to a request from MP Martina Renner that so far only the Federal Intelligence Service had complied with the Federal Prosecutor's request to inform him extensively about the files available. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which, according to the federal government, has archived 197 reports from informants, did not present them up to this point.

Known members

The following people are assigned to the military sports group Hoffmann.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal Minister of the Interior, Constitutional Protection Report 1984 , 1985, p. 194.
  2. ↑ Moses and pigs. In: Der Spiegel . 31/1989, July 31, 1989.
  3. ↑ Der Spiegel on August 9, 1976: Right-wing radicals: Ready to the last , accessed on January 19, 2014
  4. ^ Report on neo-Nazi activities 1979, Democratic Initiative Press Service 1980, p. 111.
  5. ^ Reinhard Opitz: Faschismus und Neofaschismus , Volume 2. Pahl-Rugenstein, 1988, p. 73; Annette Linke: The multimillionaire Frey and the DVU: data, facts, background. Klartext Verlag, 1994, p. 187; Hartmut Herb, Jan Peters, Mathias Thesen: The new right-wing extremism: facts and trends . Winddruck Verlag, 1980, p. 83f; Günter Grass, Daniela Dahn, Johano Strasser: In a rich country: Evidence of everyday suffering in society. Steidl Verlag, 2002, p. 486.
  6. ^ Rainer Fromm: The "Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann": Presentation, analysis and classification. Dissertation. Verlag Peter Lang, 1998, p. 125.
  7. ^ Rainer Fromm: The "Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann": Presentation, analysis and classification. Dissertation. Verlag Peter Lang, 1998, pp. 120, 428.
  8. ↑ BVerwG, ruling v. December 2, 1980, Az .: BVerwG 1 A 3/80. Available here
  9. ^ Neo-Nazis. Not just brushes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 6 , 1980, pp. 57-58 ( online - 4 February 1980 ).
  10. ↑ Hartmut Brenneisen, Juliane Bohrer, Dirk Staack: 60 years of the Basic Law. Police and security management. Vol. 6. LIT, Münster 2010, ISBN 3-643-10636-X , p. 216.
  11. ↑ Final report Bavarian State Criminal Police Office, No. 2508/80 - Kl, March 30, 1981, p. 4. Quoted in: Rainer Fromm: The "Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann". Publishing house Peter Lang, Bielefeld 1998, p. 127.
  12. ↑ Frank Gutermuth, Wolfgang Schoen (director): Gladio - Secret Army in Europe. SWR documentation, Germany 2010, 85 min.
  13. ↑ "Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann". Not a fairy tale about the bad wolf. The time, 41/1980.
  14. ↑ Hans-Gerd Jaschke, Birgit Rätsch, Yury Winterberg: After Hitler, radical right arm. Bertelsmann, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-570-00566-6 , p. 42.
  15. ↑ With all goodwill . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1986, pp. 51-52 ( Online - July 7, 1986 ).
  16. ^ Armin Pfahl-Traughber: Organized right-wing extremism in Germany after 1945 . In: Wilfried Budarth; Richard Stöss (Ed.): Right-wing extremism in the Federal Republic of Germany: A balance sheet . Leske + Buderich, 2000, p. 85.
  17. ↑ In: Der Spiegel. Hamburg 1994, 7 (Feb. 14), p. 37.
  18. ^ Rainer Fromm: The "Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann" . Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt 1998, p. 313.
  19. ^ Regine Igel: Terrorism Lies. How the Stasi acted underground. Herbig, Munich 2012, ISBN 3-7766-2698-4 , p. 287.
  20. ^ Regine Igel: Terrorism Lies. How the Stasi acted underground. Herbig, Munich 2012, ISBN 3-7766-2698-4 , p. 284.
  21. ^ Hans Karl Peterlini: Second-hand bombs. Edition Raetia, Bozen 1992, ISBN 88-7283-021-4 , p. 310.
  22. ↑ Stefan Aust, Dirk Laabs: Heimatschutz. The state and the NSU series of murders. Pantheon Verlag Munich 2014, p. 92
  23. ^ Regine Igel: Terrorism Lies. How the Stasi acted underground. Herbig, Munich 2012, ISBN 3-7766-2698-4 , p. 255.
  24. ^ Spiegel Online, Hamburg Germany: Oktoberfest assassination attempt: Greens and leftists file a lawsuit. In: Spiegel Online. Retrieved August 11, 2016 .
  25. ↑ 2nd Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court: Federal Constitutional Court - decisions - The Federal Government has, in some cases, wrongly refused to provide information on the use of V-people in connection with the Oktoberfest attack. June 13, 2017, accessed November 22, 2020 .
  26. ↑ Answer of the Federal Government to the small question of the MPs Martina Renner u. a., Drucksache 18/3810, alleged destruction of files in connection with the Oktoberfest attack and the military sports group Hoffmann at German secret services. (PDF) Retrieved August 11, 2016 .
  27. ^ Answer of Parliamentary State Secretary Christian Lange of April 22, 2016 to Question 21 by MP Martina Renner. (PDF) p. 14 , accessed on August 11, 2016 .
  28. ↑ Neo-Nazis in the Middle East - betrayed and set up . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1981, pp. 29-32 ( Online - June 29, 1981 ).
  29. ^ Wolfgang Most: Association of Lone Criminals - Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann. In: haGalil.com. January 3, 2006, accessed January 19, 2013 .
  30. ↑ Andrea Röpke: Deadly shots. In: look to the right. Institute for Information and Documentation e. V., August 4, 2011, accessed on January 19, 2013 (chargeable).
  31. ↑ a b Ramesh Chandra: Global terrorism . Global Terrorism: Foreign Policy in the New Millennium, Volume V, Gyan Publishing House, 2003, p. 47.
  32. ^ Right-wing radicals With the rucksack Der Spiegel August 20, 1984