SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Shaved heads, bomber jackets, black boots with white shoelaces -- it used to be easy to spot a neo-Nazi. But young far-right extremists are wearing more stylish and more coded clothes.
Lilian Engelmann never thought she would see neo-Nazis on her block. The young art curator works in a gallery in the trendy district of Mitte, a neighborhood in central Berlin. Her neighbors include an international cinema, designer hat store, Vietnamese restaurant and -- as of last February -- a store called Tönsberg, which sells clothing popular among right-wing extremists.
"By coming here, the neo-Nazis tried to come into the center of society," Engelmann told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Once local residents and shopowners learned that Tönsberg planned to sell the clothing brand Thor Steinar, they organized against the store. The group led by Engelmann and other shopowners called itself the "Mitte Initiative Against the Far Right," and mounted regular protests.
Neo-Nazis are a fringe group in Germany, where Holocaust denial, praise of Adolf Hitler and the display of Nazi symbols are all illegal. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the government's domestic intelligence agency, estimates there are about 40,000 active members of the German far right. The agency can shut down Kameradschaften, gangs or brotherhoods which tend to be violent, but many other groups in the neo-Nazi scene often fly under the legal radar -- like rock bands with suggestive lyrics or stylish clothing companies with coded symbols. As long as they don't display swastikas or explicitly support Hitler or his party, these groups are left alone.
Do These Sneakers Make Me Look Neo-Nazi?
Thor Steinar goods were banned in 2004 because of the logo's similarity to symbols worn by SS officers. But the company has rebranded, and its new look is legal. This presents a dilemma for Engelmann's group. Symbols and speech not obviously related to Nazism are protected by German law. So instead of trying to run the store out, her group decided to educate passersby about Tönsberg.
The group won permission from authorities in Mitte to set up a public display detailing the history of the Holocaust, the recent far right scene and neo-Nazi symbols and culture. Three tall boxes plastered with dossiers dot Rosa-Luxemburg Street in Berlin, where Engelmann's gallery stands near Tönsberg.
"We've had people come in and ask, 'If I buy these sneakers, are they sending neo-Nazi signals?'" said Engelmann. "People have a better idea of what kind of store it is."
"People" includes passersby, but also landlords. On Oct. 14, a Berlin court ruled that Tönsberg's landlord was allowed to kick the store out because Tönsberg had failed to fully disclose what types of products it would sell. A similar court decision on Oct. 28 will clear out a store selling Thor Steinar clothing in Magdeburg, a city in eastern Germany. A Hamburg store shut down in early October after protests. Three further stores in Germany sell Thor Steinar goods, but a legal decision on one of them, in Leipzig, is pending.
The brand also stirred a recent controversy in Berlin after a plainclothes policeman wore a Thor Steinar shirt while on duty at a demonstration to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht -- the Nazi-orchestrated pogroms that swept Germany on November 9, 1938. Dieter Glietsch, head of police in Berlin, said ignorance of the brand was not an excuse. "That a police officer walks around wearing Thor Steinar clothes during the anniversary of the pogrom calls for a thorough investigation," he told the Tagesspiegel newspaper. "It is not as if in Berlin people don't know what the label stands for." >>> By Rachel Nolan in Berlin | November 20, 2008
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