The eastern German state of Thuringia is under fire for unwittingly selling a large manor house to a suspected far-right sympathizer who has made it available as a meeting place for right-wing extremists.
The building stood empty in the village of Guthmannshausen, some 60 kilometers (37 miles) northeast of the state capital, Erfurt, until its sale this year, and is now being used by a notorious right-wing extremist group called Gedächtnisstätte (Memorial Site), which plans to transform it into a center to commemorate the German victims of World War II.
The organization is run by a landscape architect, Wolfram Schiedewitz, who has been on the watch-list of the domestic intelligence agency for a number of years.
The group has links with known Holocaust deniers, such as Ursula Haverbeck-Wetzel, its founder and former chairwoman, who has been convicted of incitement several times and whose two other organizations have been banned.
In a statement to supporters, Schiedewitz said his group had at last found a new home. "We want to fill our manor with life in remembrance of our civilian victims of World War II through bombs, abduction and expulsion and in prison camps," Schiedewitz said. » | Maik Baumgärtner and Christina Hebel | Tuesday, October 18, 2011
