Four top leaders of the neo-Nazi German Reichs Party were convicted and sentenced yesterday by the Bielefeld Jury Court on charges of slandering an official of North Rhine Westphalia a year ago in connection with the desecration of the Cologne synagogue.
The charges were based on an article in the party’s publication, “Reichsruf,” and in “German Weekly,” which asserted that Joseph Dufhues, Minister of the Interior of the German state, had welcomed, in a television speech, the desecration of the synagogue on Christmas Eve, 1959, as an occasion to initiate legal action against the party.
The court sentenced DRP chairman Heinrich Kunstmann and Heinz Hartele, editor of the “German Weekly,” to three months in Jail. Adolf von Thadden, editor of “Reichsruf,” and Otto Hess, former deputy chairman of the party, were sentenced to 19 and 15 weeks respectively. The court suspended all of the sentences.
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