Some of the remarks are quite revelaing
Johannes
Neo-Nazis Lay Claim to Center of Small Town
By Peter Carstens
NEUSTADT. Neustadt an der Orla has a late-Gothic town hall, a 500-year-old church, a business park, and something that the promotional brochures don't tell you about -- a "nationally liberated zone."
Goethe was here three times, taking rooms at the Golden Lion. And when Mayor Arthur Hoffmann looks out his office window, he sees a quaint, restored central market square complete with an old mail post that indicates the distance to Weimar as 10 hours by coach.
Philipp and Carolin also appreciate what this Thuringian town, which they call home, has to offer. Yet unlike their mayor, the two Gymnasium students avoid the square, known as the Neustädter Markt.
Or, more precisely, they fear it, because it is controlled by right-wing extremists.
When the sun goes down, and the local police station closes, leaving one squad car to patrol the quiet eastern German town of 9,400, skinheads move in and take control of their "nationally liberated zone." During the summer, they guarded the streets that led to the square, and refused passage to foreigners, people they judged to be leftists, and anyone else they did not like. But with virtually no foreigners in Neustadt, the skinheads eventually decided to expand their list of enemies to make university-bound high school students like Philipp and Carolin persona non grata in the very heart of their home town.
Now, with the evenings cooler, the streets are nearly empty, and "the white skinhead Opel," as it is known, with a slogan in the window praising "the master race" and an attack dog in the passenger seat, is enough to maintain the presence.
Occasionally, a representative of this race struts across the square, armed with another snarling canine. Meanwhile, the skinhead girls look into Henry's Pub, wearing short bleached hair with the bangs trimmed to a jagged edge above -- even the most generous observer could not see them otherwise -- rather dull, hostile faces.
Henry's used to be the skinheads' main hangout, but the proprietors recently posted a sign stating, "No entry with paratrooper boots or similar attire." So the comrades are not there, and the sullen girls move on.
Occasionally Philipp and Carolin eat the ubiquitous German fast food -- Turkish-style doner kababs -- at the Imbiss on Thälmann Street. It is not "nationally liberated," so Philipp and Carolin feel a bit safer, but not completely: the business used to belong to a Kurdish man, but once, after he refused to serve two or three skinheads, they returned with reinforcements and roughed him up. According to the mayor, the Kurd "provoked" the right-wingers.
The snack bar is now owned by Germans. A local teacher, Stefan Junghans, says the new owners are nice people, but he misses the Kurds.
One might say that Mr. Junghans is Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's agent in this provincial backwater. After the chancellor, alarmed by an apparent upsurge in far-right violence in Germany, called last month for "an uprising of decent people" against racist violence, the teacher started organizing his students.
Mr. Junghans is not a native of the area, having moved here from neighboring Hesse state, in western Germany, to teach history and theology. He was quickly struck by the number of students with black eyes or split lips, and how often local Gymnasium students, despite the demands of their studies, found time to break their arms.
Stones were repeatedly thrown through the windows at a "project house" that some students set up in a vacant store to show films and hold readings.
Eventually the students nailed boards over the broken windows, Philipp and Elisabeth recall, but that made them no safer. One evening, a gang of rightist extremists invaded the workshop and wrecked everything.
The turning point came on June 30, Mr. Junghans says. That evening, he and a group from the Gymnasium's theater club went to a local pub after rehearsal, only to be confronted by about 20 skinheads who entered the pub in a threatening way. It was a chilling moment that terrified the students, the teacher recalls, and although the skinheads left, one of them returned and kicked the closed door. When the students left the pub a short time later, they could see the thugs lingering in the shadows like hyenas stalking a herd of antelope. Mr. Junghans says he stopped a police car that passed by chance, only to be told that the officers could do nothing as long as no one had been physically attacked.
The sense of helplessness and the inaction of the police prompted some students and teachers to take a stand. Together they founded the "initiative for a violence-free town," began planning a demonstration, and invited Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse, who hails from eastern Germany, to attend.
A few days later, Philipp was stunned when he was called to the principal's office and told that "the Bundestag president's office wants to talk to you."
Mr. Thierse would be out of the country and could not attend, he was told, but at least the answer was more polite than the initial response of the town council. After the students outlined their plans, one council member pointedly suggested that they turn to the next point on the agenda.
"They'd rather talk about planters for shrubs and flowers than about rightist extremism," one student said of the experience.
The mayor sees it differently, A father, churchgoer and former district secretary in the old East German Christian Democratic Union, Mr. Hoffmann says the council is trying to steer a careful course through conflicting partisan agendas while avoiding polarizing decisions that could spark conflict.
Young people have always been involved in "dust-ups," he says, recalling that during his youth in the old German Democratic Republic, local dances often turned ugly when the locals had run-ins with Algerian guest workers from local factories; knives would come out, the mayor adds, rolling up his right sleeve to show a scar from an Algerian blade.
"Certain young people have always gotten a kick from fighting and no doubt there are sometimes right-wingers among them," says Mr. Hoffmann, adding that young neo-Nazis are by no means responsible for all the trouble in the town.
Still, while insisting that Neustadt is not a stronghold of the radical right, he warns that "we must be on guard that we do not become one."
"Some help from above wouldn't be out of place either," the mayor adds.
After the Berlin Wall fell, Neustadt saw some hard times, as unemployment soared to 23 percent. But many homes have been renovated and more than 1,300 new jobs created at the local business park, the mayor says.
As part of the effort to keep the town on the right track, he explains, "we want to engage the radical right in a dialogue."
The anti-violence initiative's 15 students, however, see no point in holding discussions with racist and anti-democrats who are prepared for violence. "We want to show them that it is our marketplace and not theirs," one student explains.
Their plans for an information day on Nov. 18, including the screening in the town hall of a film about Thuringia's neo-Nazis, and the display of a map showing the sites of right-wing violence in Neustadt, are aimed at driving this point home. Says Mr. Junghans: "Our young people would like the town to demonstrate that it stands behind us."
Left mostly unsaid by the students is the realization that, in a year or two, most of them will move on to Jena, Erfurt or other cities to study. But the neo-Nazis will still be in Neustadt.
Mr. Hoffmann looks distinctly uncomfortable when asked about the students' request that an appeal for public participation be included in a regular mailing by the municipality to all homes. Meanwhile, the local member of the German parliament, the Social Democrat Christine Lehder, has promised her support.
The next morning, the mayor reluctantly agrees to let the students use his office, promises to attend, and says he may even make a welcoming address.
But he wants assurances that everything will be orderly, and stresses that there are security concerns: Not the least of them, the stones with which the square is paved are not all fixed in mortar.
That evening the students, teachers and some local politicians gather at the home of the Rocco family, one of only six or seven foreign families living in Neustadt, and the red wine brightens the mood.
At the end of a discussion, Petra Scheller, one of the teachers, concludes: "If a lot of little people in little places do a lot of little things, they can change the face of the world."