A German problem, East and West

By Joachim Kaeppner

MUNICH (DPA): It can happen to anyone, anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time, anyone who does not even know there is such a thing as a right and a wrong place and time -- anyone out for an innocent stroll on the streets of his home town.

The latest victim was attacked in Zenetti Street, in Munich -- a Greek who fell into the clutches of a horde of right-wing extremists and was only saved by the extraordinarily courageous intervention of two Turkish passers-by. According to police reports, the neo-Nazis' intention was to kill the man, a random target. But the attack had other repercussions -- it exploded the false belief held by many "West" Germans that right-wing violence is something which happens somewhere else, somewhere "over there", in the wilds of the former East Germany.

This was a case of attempted murder, right in the center of the city of Munich, the capital and heart of the German state of Bavaria, the law and order state. Bavaria, not Saxony; West, not East. This was a very real potential homicide, not an allegedly racially-motivated child murder later to be disproved, as was the case in the Saxon town of Sebnitz recently (a case which received national coverage in the German press). Violent right-wing extremism is in reality a pan-German problem.

A neo-Nazi attack on a picket in western Wuppertal, extremists threatening the mayor of the Frankish wine-growing town of Iphofen (also in the west), Munich waking up to the fact that its skinhead scene is alive and kicking: these events justify the case put by politicians from eastern states who, in the aftermath of the Sebnitz media debacle, seemed to be complaining that the whole of eastern Germany had been accused of collective murder. They responded to the accusation by pointing the finger at the west.

The Sebnitz case did not erect a "new Wall", as has been claimed, but it did call into existence a very real east-west confrontation which, sadly, weakens the common forces ranged against the country's right-wing terrorist threat.

Germany appeared to go from one extreme to the other. At first, many "west". Germans believed headlines which proclaimed "Neo-Nazis drown child". They were convinced a crime of this nature could only ever happen in the East. When the truth behind the "murder" story was exposed, it suddenly became unfashionable to mention the considerable differences between the right-wing menace in the East and that in the West. The trend since then has been toward platitudes aimed at detracting from the significance of the incident -- people are no more prone to violence in the east than in the west, right-wing extremism is as much a problem "over here" as it is "over there", nothing worth making a fuss about.

Official interpretations should always be treated with scepticism. Of course there is a right-wing problem in the western German states. The horrific incident in Munich only goes to show just how serious and seriously underplayed this problem has become. But it remains a different problem than that in the East.

In western Germany, skinheads and their associates represent an anti-social fringe group with the potential for growth which time and again threatens to descend into criminality. In eastern Germany, there is a broad youth culture, an anti-culture, which extends deep into the heart of society.

That foreigners residing in the eastern towns of Schwerin (on the Baltic coast) and Dresden (in Saxony, further south) are at greater risk than those in the western centers of Frankfurt or Hamburg and that the former Communist states in the east top the statistical charts of neo-Nazi attacks are not the greatest differences; the biggest difference between "Ossis" and "Wessis" is the way they view foreigners.

When it comes to attitudes toward non-Germans, the former party of the East, the Socialist Unity Party (SED), still exerts a great influence over many of its "offspring". Germany may be a popular target country for immigrants, but this does not apply to the East, where in many areas, fear of -- and retaliation against -- foreigners dominate, despite the dearth of foreigners living there. This fear gives rise to aggressive arrogance and it is pointless to play this point down.

But equally nonsensical is the attitude that barbarism is commonplace in the economically depressed East of Germany and unknown in the pristine West. The same goes for Bavaria, whose politicians are so proud of the wealth and orderliness of their Free State. Barbarism can strike anyone, anywhere, even in Munich, even in Zenetti Street.