Sitting in a squatter house in the eastern German city of Halle, a house that smelled of sweat and stale beer, listening to a chubby ex-cook spouting neo-Nazi propaganda, leafing through a pamphlet honoring Rudolf Hess, and being bossed about by another blond boy in leather trousers and suspenders who called himself a Gauleiter--and all this on the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938--I thought of Rimbaud's words in the African desert: “What am I doing here?”
It all started with a newspaper article that had appeared the previous week. According to this article, on November 9, the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as of Kristallnacht and the failed Hitler putsch of 1923, neo-Nazis from all over Germany would gather in Halle to commemorate the occasion. Reason enough, I thought, to check out the action.
Like all former GDR cities, Halle stinks of brown coal and chemical pollution. The air is so bad it makes your eyes water. The place also looks as though it were just bombed: fine old houses stand in ruin, windows are blown out, roofs have caved in, and the streets are full of holes. But for the brand-new shops, mostly west German chain stores, it feels a bit like walking around a huge studio backlot for a film set in 1945. The strange atmosphere is intensified by the graffiti: “Nazis Out!” “Destroy the Nazis!” “Kill the Fascists!”
Shops, cafes, and restaurants were all locked up on November 9. The people were frightened, we were told, frightened of Nazis. After we knocked for a long time at the door of a coffee shop, the burly owner let us in briefly. He had a gun on his counter. “You never know what might happen here,” he said. “It wasn't like this under Honecker,” muttered a man in a thick overcoat, as he plunged a knife into a thick Thuringian sausage.
It seemed as though the town were under police occupation. Every street and square was blocked off by cops. Armored vehicles with water cannon patrolled the main streets. Riot squads and border police were putting up barricades. On the market square, in front of the handsome old church, wild-eyed “anti-fascists,” belonging to the Spartakist League, screamed: “Out! Out! Out! Nazis out!” Leaflets were handed out, warning the burghers that another Kristallnacht was at hand. Nervous citizens crowded round the new mayor, a tall man from west Germany who towered over the people like a teacher in the midst of his charges. He had the patient voice of a dedicated schoolmaster.
“Why are those Nazis allowed to come and demonstrate here?” asked one irate citizen. “Why can't they be banished?” That, after all, was how troublemakers were dealt with before. “Well,” explained the mayor, “we are living in a democracy now, and as long as they don't use violence, they can come and say what they want, even if we don't agree with them. That is what it means to have rule of law.” An elderly man with thick glasses would have none of this: “That's how Adolf came to power. It's just like in 1932. They let it happen then too. Ach, what rule of law!”
The only thing lacking in all this commotion of nervous citizens, hysterical anti-fascists, and busy riot policemen were the Nazis themselves. They were nowhere to be seen, or heard. One only heard about them. About the thousands who were gathering as we spoke; about the squatter house, occupied by the “Gauleiter” and his followers, who were about to attack foreigners with Molotov cocktails and knives.
So we went to the local police headquarters to find out where the Nazis were. The press officer was an overweight man with a soft baby mouth and cowboy boots. He couldn't tell us where the Nazis were but promised that the Einsatzgruppen stood ready. This was reassuring but not helpful.
Perhaps the Nazi squatter house was a better place to ask. I had hoped to see the Gauleiter. Instead his mother came out, surrounded by a group of thin, blond teenagers. She told us that Thomas, the Gauleiter, was in town demonstrating, but we might want to come back for a “press conference” in the evening.
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