Security officials in Hamburg are investigating reports that a new Nazi group called the Association of German National Socialists was planning to establish itself at a secret meeting to be held in that city on May 1-2. The leader of the group was identified as 29-year-old Wolf Peter Eckhart.
The reputedly neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) predicted that it would achieve a paid membership of over 50,000 by the time national elections are held next September. The party claimed its membership was increasing daily because the threat of a ban on the NPD has been removed. A move to ask the Constitutional Court at Karlsruhe to outlaw the NPD as anti-democratic was still under consideration by the government, led by Interior Minister Ernst Benda. But political observers saw little chance that such action would be taken before the elections. The Congress of the Teachers’ Associations of Lower Saxony ruled this week to ban NPD members from joining that organization.
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