Neo-Nazi violence threatens eastern recovery

Wartburg Castle overlooks Eisenach from its evergreen hill

From Chris Burns
CNN Berlin bureau chief

EISENACH, Germany (CNN) -- Eisenach is in the midst of a gradual post-communist renaissance. It's the birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach and home of Wartburg Castle, which served as a hideaway for Martin Luther while he translated the New Testament into German.

But on the other side of the train tracks is North Eisenach, a densely populated working-class neighbourhood where former communist housing blocks are home to two groups -- poor Germans hit hard by high unemployment, and immigrants, many of whom sought asylum after fleeing strife in their homelands, only to find a new kind of conflict.

As Germany marks 10 years since unification, it is still struggling to close the economic gap between the former west and east -- a gap blamed in part on a recent rise in neo-Nazi violence in the east.

Over the summer, a Turkish restaurant in North Eisenach was bombed. Police called it another far-right attack.

"For the first time they have gone so far as to use concrete violence in the form of explosives," said Raymond Walk of Eisenach police.

Skender Muluku, whose ethnic Albanian family fled Kosovo eight years ago, has been beaten by neo-Nazi skinheads twice -- once in 1998, and again this spring while he was walking at night with his German girlfriend.

"I turned around and he had a knife … and because I was scared, I dropped my radio and broke it. And then he hit me," Muluku said.

Skinhead attacks

Even in their asylum dormitory, the Muluku family can't escape the violence. At night, skinheads sometimes throw stones and yell "auslaender raus," ("foreigners out.") One rock crashed through a kitchen window as dinner was being prepared.

Neo-Nazi demonstrations in eastern Germany have been on the rise

Among fatal attacks this year, skinhead youths beat and kicked to death a Mozambican man in the eastern town of Dessau.

There is fear the violence could have a more far-reaching effect -- that former East Germany's painstaking recovery could be jeopardised by the people who are yet to feel its effects, and that skinheads could scare off badly needed investment and professionals from outside.

Chris Goerner, an unemployed 19-year-old skinhead, is irritated by subsidies for Kosovo refugees.

"Each of them, regardless of age, was supposed to get 5,000 deutschmarks. Do you think that is good? My parents work for that much, and I don't think it's right," he Goerner.

The actual subsidy is a fraction of that, but the rumour has fed the anger of many youths here.

Most Germans want to work and the foreigners take the work away from us," says Ronny Stade, also unemployed. "We go to the unemployment office and they say we got no job for you."

Stade's girlfriend, Alexandra Tiemann, a nursing home worker, says youths get sucked into the far-right movement because their families fell apart when the economy collapsed.

Youngsters rebel by collecting forbidden CDs and other Nazi paraphernalia

"They think, 'Aha, I've got friends -- comrades as it is called in the radical right scene -- they help, they stand by me. What do I need parents for,'" says Tiemann. "And they stay here until late, drink a beer, and drink more and more."

Another way to rebel is by collecting forbidden CDs and other Nazi paraphernalia, which is against the law in Germany but produced legally in other European countries and the U.S. With the help of the Internet and mobile phones, a handful of organisers can have a wide reach.

Police have craked down on the far-right movement and have asked the public to help. Walk says Eisenach has a "relatively structured right-wing scene, 20 to 30 people strong."

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, on a recent swing through the east, promised a carrot-and-stick approach -- speedy justice for attackers and more job training to fight youth unemployment -- in an effort to keep youths' anger and frustration from feeding what officials call an increasingly dangerous movement.