Death of deputy leader imperils far-right German party (News Feature)

By Michael Evers Oct 30, 2009, 18:10 GMT

   Hamburg - The sudden death of one of Germany's principal far rightists, Juergen Rieger, at the age of 63 may also spell the end of his financially shaky group, the National Democratic Party (NPD).

As deputy leader, Rieger, who was a lawyer, not only helped the NPD skirt to legal problems but also used his skills and assets to bolster its financial position. He died on Thursday in a hospital in Berlin, five days after suffering a stroke at an NPD meeting.

All over Germany, Rieger's name on any real-estate contract has evoked dread among public officials in recent years.

He repeatedly sought to purchase run-down properties, such as derelict hotels and cinemas, saying he would turn them into NPD conference centres. Communities, worried they would be overrun by neo-Nazis, usually bought the sites at a premium to stymy him.

With Rieger gone, the party has no highly educated person with proven business skills in its upper echelons.

His Hamburg family has moved to dissociate itself from the party, saying only close relatives would be invited to his funeral and his remains would be cremated to ensure that neo-Nazis did not lay flowers on any Rieger grave.

Although legal, the NPD is under surveillance by German anti-subversion agencies who believe Rieger was the financial brains behind the party after joining it in 2006. Typically, members of the party have only modest educations.

Even before his demise, the NPD had been running perilously short of money after being fined 1.27 million euros for financial irregularities and losing 700,000 euros through the dishonesty of a past treasurer who used its funds to aid his private business.

'Now they haven't got the financier who always managed to magic up some extra cash,' said Guenter Heiss, head of anti-subversion inquiries in Lower Saxony state. 'That ought to have them good and worried.'

Rieger's personal assets probably only totalled about 500,000 euros (750,000 dollars), according to news reports, and it is not known if he left them in his will to the party or to his family.

One far-right blogger adverted to the looming financial pain, writing on his website, 'I'm just hoping the whole NPD does not collapse now that he is gone.'

   The Rieger method of getting municipalities and civic groups to pay well over the odds for junk real estate was practised in a series of German towns - Delmenhorst, Melle, Warmensteinach and Wunsiedel - which were desperate to keep out jackbooted neo-Nazis.

Each time, Rieger made an offer to buy some shabby old hotel or hall. He let it be known it would renovate the site and use it to 'educate' NPD activists. Every time, the locals panicked at the vision of neighbours from hell moving into their quiet communities.

They formed civic-action groups, held vigils, hired expensive advisers and often raised funds to outbid Rieger.

In Delmenhorst, horrified citizens donated an astronomical 3 million euros to buy a run-down hotel from the previous proprietor, just so that Rieger would not get hold of it. The otherwise worthless building was demolished this year, just to make sure.

Vendors made handsome gains from such deals, and some critics suspected that this was the ulterior motive, and that the wily Rieger somehow benefited too. This has never been proved.

At Fassberg, a small town south of Hamburg where Rieger was recently seeking a property, the mayor voiced relief.

'Obviously Rieger's death means that the town council is not under the same pressure as before,' said Hans-Werner Schlitte on Friday. An unused hotel near the town is up for auction, and Rieger had indicated he would bid.

In Wolfsburg, the home of carmaking company Volkswagen, municipal authorities had been fighting plans by Riegel to build a private museum honouring Kraft durch Freude (KdF), the Nazi organization that oversaw the pre-War plans to build the 'people's car' there.

Purged of the Nazi taint, the Volkswagen company was re-founded under British military control after the Second World War, and its Beetle car became a huge success. Wolfsburg was horrified at the plans to highlight its significance for the Nazis.

City councillor Werner Borcherding said Rieger had been the mover and shaker of the KdF museum scheme and his death spelled a sea change. 'Of course we will have to watch out if anyone takes over from him,' said Borcherding.

In political terms, the German far right has lost an adept spokesman who managed to repeatedly get into the news, both in connection with the real-estate bids and his court appearances in defence of neo-Nazis.

His clients faced sedition charges for denying that the Holocaust happened or for claiming that the Diary of Anne Frank was a forgery, common claims among those who revere Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

Rieger nearly faced charges himself, for painting an SS-style symbol on his private Second World War German Army vehicle or for keeping an assault rifle in his home, but police admitted it would have been difficult to win a conviction against the wily lawyer.