Money Pouring Into Germany Neo-Nazi Movement

Analysis By Yojana Sharma

This is the triumph of "a multimillionaire who makes a business out of right-wing extremism," said Gregor Gysi, parliamentary leader of the Democratic Left party (PDS-former communist), another winner in the polls.

DVU's leader Gerhard Frey, a publisher from the southern city of Munich, "invested" $1.7 billion -- as much as the ruling Social Democratic party (SPD) -- in the campaign, plastering the streets of Potsdam with "Foreigners Out" and "Criminal Foreigners Go" posters.

The elections in Brandenburg and in the Social Democratic stronghold of Saarland (western Germany) were seen as a referendum on German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's lackluster regime almost a year after his party defeated the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in national polls.

The success of the CDU in overturning the Social Democrats majority in Saarland and the PDS' growth in Brandenburg -- 23.5 percent -- have been somewhat overshadowed by the DVU.

The CDU narrowly ended a 15-year Social Democratic reign in Saarland, while in Brandenburg the SPD remains the largest party, but unable to rule by itself.

In Brandenburg, the SPD will be forced to seek an alliance either with the Christian Democrats or the former communists as its Green coalition partners were left out of both regional parliaments with 1.9 percent in Brandenburg and 3.2 in Saarland.

Gysi made clear today that his party is not available for an alliance whose aim is to "translate Schroeder's policy" -- trimming the social welfare structure -- into Brandenburg.

The DVU passed the five percent hurdle which allows it to be represented in the local legislature (Landtag) under Germany's proportional representation system.

It has achieved this only twice before: in 1992 in the northern state of Schleswig Holstein -- although it lost in a subsequent election -- and in 1998 in the depressed eastern State of Saxony Anhalt when it shocked the country by gaining 13 percent of the vote.

In the Sept. 5 poll in Brandenburg the CDU gained 26 percent of the vote, an increase of 7.5 percent. The SPD lost a thumping 14.3 percent of its vote.

Votes were picked up by the former communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) with 23.5 percent of the vote and the far right.

The DVU will for the first time have five members in the Brandenburg Landtag.

"This is a dramatic result (for the far-right)," said the SPD's top candidate in Brandenburg, Manfred Stolpe, who expressed the party's deep disappointment at the results.

"With the DVU entry (in the Landtag) it will become more difficult for the community to stand united against right-wing extremism. The violent extreme right has achieved a moral basis in these elections," he said.

The CDU top candidate, the controversial former army general Joerg Schoenbohm, who in his previous job in the Berlin senate called for a limited "Turkish quota" in Berlin schools and a stop to the registration of Turkish residents in certain Berlin districts, was more circumspect about the DVU victory.

Schoenbohm had been sent to Brandenburg to pull votes from disaffected youth who would otherwise vote for the far-right or the former communists, but is credited with pushing the CDU almost into far-right territory with his own "anti-foreigner" sentiments.

Rather than criticize the DVU, as his CDU colleagues unequivocally did this weekend, Schoenbohm merely said the far-right menace had to be combated by giving disaffected youth more hope for the future, particular by creating jobs.

Meanwhile, analysts say the DVU victory will mean it may take on a higher public profile, particularly in upcoming elections in the eastern states of Thuringia on Sept. 12, Saxony on September 19 and Berlin itself on Oct. 10.

Unlike the other parties, the DVU has not sent its candidates on hand-shaking and baby-kissing sprees through the towns.

Its candidates remain largely invisible leading to its reputation as a "phantom party" steered from Munich by party chief Frey.

According to the internal secret service -- the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, with some 18,000 members in Germany the DVU is the largest neo-Nazi party in Germany.

However in Brandenburg itself the OPC puts the DVU membership at only 200, further increasing the impression of the DVU of a party with few roots in the community and steered from a distance.

Even those voting DVU seemed not to be aware who the candidates where.

After the election results were announced, Liane Hesselbarth, a 37-year old former office worker who will now represent the DVU in the Brandenburg Landtag, came before cameras in the state capital of Potsdam, flanked by bodyguards.

She was being careful. The DVU would target politicians perks, she said. "The official cars of politicians must be got rid of. They cost too much."

Then she added amid catcalls of "Nazis out" -- "we will stop the state wasting millions of marks of taxpayers' money on asylum seekers' hostels."

They are promising to give the DVU a tough time just as they have done in Saxony-Anhalt where they attempted to have the DVU excluded from meetings.

The DVU victory is likely to increase the self-confidence of neo-Nazi groups in general.

After the 1998 Saxony-Anhalt victory, many DVU members and skinheads came out of the shadows and held marches in town centers. Although they were increasingly met with anti-fascist marches, the number of attacks on foreigners rose alarmingly.

How to deal with the DVU's foray into mainstream politics is only one of Schroeder's problems in upcoming state elections.

The Brandenburg election itself was a wake-up call. Frey was already targeting Thuringia which had its Landtag elections last week, as its "special territory" for increasing the DVU's showing.

"We are hoping for ten percent (of the vote)," says Heinrich Gerlach, a Frey aid.

Schroeder's popularity has been at record lows nationally, with the SPD lagging 15 percentage points behind the CDU.

Proposals to trim state spending on health and pensions have been deeply unpopular and his administration is seen as lacking in vision, vigor and direction.