The shift to the right in German politics has sparked an interest in the right-wing extremist subculture. Heidi Benneckenstein’s book, Ein deutsches Mädchen, about her upbringing with a neo-Nazi father and her later escape from neo-Nazi circles has become a bestseller. (Personally, I found her partner’s story even more interesting, as Felix Benneckenstein came from a liberal family and became a neo-Nazi of his own accord. He decided to drop out after a serious rift with a rivalling neo-Nazi and a stint in Stadelheim prison.) Heidi Benneckenstein and her partner prove that right-wing extremism cannot be dismissed as an East German phenomenon. They both grew up in small towns close to Munich. Felix Benneckestein later moved to Dortmund because, he says, the city is hailed as a right-wing stronghold and he wanted ‘to support the movement there’.
The journalist Andrea Röpke has written extensively on German right-wing extremists. Two of her publications focus on women activists. Interestingly, Röpke was banned from the AfD party conference in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in February 2016. She’s also been attacked several times. Röpke has received numerous prizes for her work. (She often co-edits her work with fellow journalist Andreas Speit. Speit’s latest book is on Reichsbürger.)
The author Wolfgang Schorlau has used the NSU murders as the main theme of his most recent book “Die schützende Hand” (2015, The protecting hand). The book is the eighth volume in his very successful detective Dengler series and has been made into a TV film. Another film relating to the NSU murders was made by Fatih Akin (In the Fade, 2017). Diane Kruger won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for her role as the main character whose family is murdered by right-wing extremists. She takes the law into her own hands after the justice system fails to convict the murderers of her husband and child.
At a time when patriotism, or what is often regarded as such, is becoming increasingly en vogue again, Fabian von Schlabrendorff’s speech from 1957 seems particularly poignant. (This is a quote from a speech he held in commemoration of the men involved in the attack on Hitler on 20 July 1944)
In Germany we’ve gotten used to regarding the love of the fatherland and patriotism, and humanism and cosmopolitism as opposites. Nothing could be more wrong. At a difficult time in our history, Fichte put it very succinctly: A patriot knows that the values developed within a nation must be beneficial to all humanity. And a cosmopolitan knows that a true value has to be born and developed within a nation. That’s why, Fichte said, patriotism and cosmopolitism are not opposites but complement each other.