On November 4, 2011, the so-called National Socialist Underground revealed itself. Two members died, the group confessed to ten murders. Ten years later, questions remain unanswered and new right-wing extremist acts are more likely than ever.
Ten years ago, a mobile home in Eisenach-Stregda went up in flames, in which police officers suspected two bank robbers. Shortly before, there had been a bank robbery nearby. Shots are fired in the camper. A little later, an apartment burns in Zwickau. With every hour, every day that passes after this mission on November 4, 2011, the connections become more complex and monstrous.
Two bodies are found in the mobile home, the dead are identified as Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, two neo-Nazis who have been in hiding for years. The investigators also find two weapons. Police weapons: the service pistol of the policewoman Michèle Kiesewetter, who was murdered in Heilbronn in April 2007, and that of her surviving colleague. The investigators also find what they are looking for in the burned-out apartment in Zwickau. You come across a confessional video in which a “National Socialist underground” declares itself responsible for ten murders that killed nine tradespeople with Turkish and Greek roots and the young policewoman between 2000 and 2007.
The acts go down as the largest series of right-wing extremist murders in the history of the Federal Republic and result in a mammoth trial and several committees of inquiry. In the Munich NSU trial, Beate Zschäpe, an accomplice of Böhnhardt and Mundlos, is sentenced to life imprisonment. Because the court has determined the severity of the guilt, she will probably never leave prison again. Besides her, only three other accomplices are convicted, in one of the cases the appeal proceedings are ongoing.
Blind or deluded authorities
That the monstrous acts of the NSU should only have been known to such a small group that there should have been so few accomplices, is one of the still big question marks around the right-wing extremist terror group. The Federal Criminal Police Office had in the meantime determined over 100 contact persons of the trio. At the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, however, there are currently only nine proceedings against alleged NSU supporters.
In an expert discussion by the Media service integration the lawyer Seda Başay-Yıldız, who had represented the family of the murdered Enver Şimşek in the NSU trial as a joint plaintiff, complained that the police and the public prosecutor’s office for years with “racist thought and action structures” proceeded. She sees “no starting point to believe that the investigative authorities will not continue to investigate racially in the future”. As an example, she cites the accidental occurrence of racist chat groups at various police stations and military units across Germany in the past few years. Hundreds of them are now.
Right-wing extremism researcher Matthias Quent emphasized at the same point that the NSU complex had by no means been cleared up. The open questions that Quent names include, in addition to the support networks that have not been clarified, the presence of a constitutional protection officer at the murder of Halit Yozgat in Kassel. Quent vehemently defends himself against the story that November 2011 represents a turning point in the perception of right-wing extremist acts of violence in Germany. Rather, there is a long continuity of these acts and at the same time a tradition of trivializing and trivializing.
Always new victims
This continuity continued after 2011. Heike Kleffner, managing director of the Association of Advice Centers for Persons Affected by Right-Wing, Racist and Anti-Semitic Violence, refers in the “Frankfurter Rundschau” to more than a dozen people who died in right-wing terrorist, racist, anti-Semitic attacks and “right-wing embassy acts” in the past 24 months. The murder of Walter Lübcke, the attacks in Halle and Hanau with two and nine dead occurred during this time.
Thomas Haldenwang, the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, claims that there have been enough structural and personnel changes in the meantime to prevent the NSU from being repeated. Probably not everyone would agree and it is clear that the security authorities have not prevented the murders of the past two years. In any case, the challenges have not gotten any smaller, emphasized Haldenwang in the panel of experts. In 2020 his authority recorded 33,300 right-wing extremists, of whom 13,300 are considered “violence-oriented”. The tendency of these numbers is increasing, as is that of right-wing extremist crimes, among which there are also more and more violent acts. These include, for example, murder, manslaughter, serious bodily harm, robbery or even serious sexual offenses.
It is particularly worrying when Haldenwang reports that one sees individuals and very small groups “who are dealing with attack plans and in some cases are already preparing for the crime”. With the New Right, new groups would be ready “who would spread their inhuman, xenophobic and in parts anti-Semitic ideology to the scene and who would try to bring their ideology to the center of society.”
Repetition excluded?
From a victim’s point of view, Chancellor Angela Merkel did not keep her promise of February 2012. At a memorial event for the victims of the NSU, she said: “As Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, I promise you: We will do everything we can to investigate the murders and uncover the accomplices and backers and bring all perpetrators to their just punishment.” And she promised: “It’s also about doing everything within the possibilities of our constitutional state so that something like this can never happen again.”
In the meantime, so-called “enemy lists” are circulating in right-wing extremist circles – documents in which right-wing extremists collect names and often addresses of political opponents. They are politicians, scientists, journalists, teachers or just people who are involved in civil society. These people are threatened and intimidated, and their addresses are made public. Lübcke was also on one of these lists. But ten years after the NSU’s self-exposure, the security authorities are declining and talking about data collections that do not provide any indications of specific dangers.