Neo-nazi Violence in Germany Up Fourfold over Year Before

Neo-Nazi violence in Germany, directed mainly at foreigners, soared nearly fourfold last year compared with 1990, according to a government report issued last week.

For the first time, right-wing radicals over-took leftist extremists both in the number of followers and the level of violence, Interior Minister Rudolf Seiters said.

The total number of attacks registered in eastern and western Germany was 1,483, Seiters said in presenting the annual report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Bonn’s counterintelligence and internal security agency.

There were 990 attacks in 1991, compared to 270 in 1990. Most of the attacks were against asylum-seekers from Third World or Eastern European countries.

The report put at 40,000 the number of members in neo-Nazi groups, about a third of them in eastern Germany.

German media gave wide coverage to the report, calling for new educational, political and police efforts to deal with the neo-Nazi upsurge.

In the central Germany city of Gottingen, in what used to be West Germany, the expulsion of a neo-Nazi activist late last year has led to a dramatic decrease in neo-Nazi attacks on foreigners. Interior Minister Gerhard Glogowski of the federal state of Lower Saxony said last week that a new calm had been restored since the departure of Karl Polacek, a 57-year-old Austrian who was chairman of the local neo-Nazi Free German Workers Party.

Gottingen was the site of much extremist violence, often perpetrated by Skinheads, the shaven-headed right-wing youth.

Glogowski said an upgraded police presence had also helped to bring about a drop in the attacks on foreigners.

Meanwhile, two recent neo-Nazi attacks against refugee hostels were reported last week by the federal state of Brandenburg, in eastern Germany. The buildings suffered minor damage before police arrived at the scene. No arrests were made.