The deputy chairman of the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party, who has a Nazi record dating back to the pre-World War II era, resigned yesterday from that post but not as a member of the NPD’s parliamentary faction in the Baden-Wurttemburg state legislature. Wilhelm Gutmann, 67, gave ill health as the grounds for his resignation, but it came just after a clash with Erich Ganzenmueller, head of the Christian Democratic Party in Baden-Wurttemburg, who refused to cooperate with the NPD and denounced Mr. Gutmann for mistreatment of Jews 30 years ago for which he served a prison term in 1947.
The clash occurred in the Baden-Wurttemburg parliament Friday when the question of committee assignments came up. The NPD won its first seats in the state legislature by 9.8 percent of the votes cast in an April election. Mr. Ganzenmueller, speaking for the Christian Democrats and for the Social Democratic and Free Democratic Party factions as well, said that those parties, as liberals, could not cooperate with the NPD. Mr. Ganzenmueller referred to Mr. Gutmann’s role in the notorious “crystal night” in Germany in 1938 when Jewish property was destroyed and thousands of Jews were arrested by the Nazis. He also noted that Mr. Gutmann, as mayor of the south German town of Tiengen before the war, took part in actions against Jewish citizens and was sentenced to a prison term. Members of the NPD faction reacted with shouts of “de-Nazification.” One of them, Karl Bassler, insisted that the 1947 verdict had no bearing on Mr. Gutmann’s 1968 status and declared that the NPD stood him.
But apparently Mr. Gutmann was proving more of a liability than an asset to NPD chairman Adolf von Thadden, who is trying to cleanse the image of his party which has been denounced as neo-Nazi in West Germany and abroad. Last April Mr. Gutmann lost a defamation suit against the Work Committee Against Right-Wing Radicalism which had accused him of terrorism against Jews in Tiengen. The state prosecutor declined to pursue the charges on the grounds that they were true.
The Muenster administrative high court has ruled that the city of Duesseldorf must rent municipal halls to the NPD.
Help ensure Jewish news remains accessible to all. Your donation to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency powers the trusted journalism that has connected Jewish communities worldwide for more than 100 years. With your help, JTA can continue to deliver vital news and insights. Donate today.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
