Four German institutions of higher learning, led by world famed Goettingen University, have protested the appointment last week of Leonhard Schlueter, open neo-Nazi leader and publisher of neo-Nazi books, as Minister of Education and Religion in the State of Lower Saxony.
The rector and Senate of Goettingen University the rector of Brunswick Institute of Technology, the rector of the Pedagogical Academy of Brunswick and the director of the Pedagogical Academy of Goettingen have resigned in protest against the appointment. While professors continue to run classes, students in Goettingen and to a lesser extent in Brunswick went on a strike this week-end in support of the educators protest. Last night some 3,000 students marched through Goettingen in a torchlight parade, carrying signs denouncing the Nazis and the appointment of Schlueter.
In the Lower Saxony Parliament where no voice had been lifted in protest against the appointment of 34-year-old Schlueter, and official of the Christian Democratic Party joined Dr. Thomas Dehler, head of the Free Democratic Party, of which Schlueter is a member, in defending the neo-Nazi and in denouncing the students and faculty members of the schools for “attempting to influence Parliament’s freedom of decision.” In his own defense, Schlueter, who helped organize the Socialist Reich Party, which has been outlawed as neo-Nazi by the Bonn Government claims to have had one Jewish grandparent.
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