“The NSU complex”: Reconstruction of the intangible – ZEIT ONLINE

Four years have passed since Chancellor Angela Merkel at the funeral for the victims of right-wing terror group National Socialist Underground (NSU) promised: “We will do everything possible to clear up the murders and uncover the accomplices and backers and supplying all perpetrators to justice. by this all competent authorities shall work in federal and state with high pressure. ” On February 23, 2012 she said this, and Merkel has probably even meant honestly. But its promise has long since been overtaken by reality.

In a movie trilogy NSU had seen the first one after the perpetrators, victims and investigators. The ratings were rather weak, the last part might see only nine per cent of viewers. After examination committees in at least six state parliaments and the Bundestag, after years of trial before the Higher Regional Court in Munich and countless media reports, the public seems tired. And the horror that after flying up the NSU in November 2011 and gradually affects become known authorities failure the public had – it seems faded.

Well, that ARD is still a fourth, very different has done film: the one-hour documentary the in the former levels NSU complex , – and today’s world editor in chief Stefan Aust, together with his colleague Dirk Laabs the emergence and actions of the terrorist group to trace documentary. After the three movies that mixed fact and fiction, they remain hard to reality. The two authors are deeply embedded in theme, Laabs is one of the few journalists who even late yet persevere as at meetings of the parliamentary committee of inquiry to NSU at night in the stands. Two years ago, Aust and Laabs had submitted by Homeland Security, the previously most extensive and thorough book on the NSU.

Your documentation starts right long before 1998, when Uwe Böhnhardt, Uwe Mundlos and Beate Zschäpe went into hiding. The history of the terrorist group and the failure of the security agencies began namely much earlier, already directly after the reunification, as in East Germany formed a militant, racist youth scene. After the collapse of the DDR partly ruled a government vacuum; Police, judiciary and politics were the extreme right-wing thugs vast space and downplayed the problem. Rows of enlisted the constitutional protection of V-people who do not destabilized the scene, but even strengthened. Until her late prohibition in autumn 2000, the skinhead organization Blood and Honour could grow into a central network that eventually Böhnhardt, Mundlos and Zschäpe allowed one years of underground life. The protection of its sources was the constitutional protection authorities more important than the investigation of crimes. And it has obviously until today little changed as various performances by intelligence officials in committees of inquiry or the Munich NSU Trial Show – Merkel’s promise on full information appear as a mockery.

Aust and Laabs be some known and yet unknown witnesses to speak: policemen who were apparently hindered in pursuing the NSU by their superiors and the Protection of the Constitution. The Thuringian state parliament Katharina König, which was once assaulted a member of the Youth Community in Jena itself of right thugs from the milieu of the NSU. Tino Brandt, the longtime leader of the neo-Nazi network Thuringian Homeland Security told frankly that the V-man fees of the secret to him its activities in the first allowed – monthly cell phone bills of 1,500 Mark or the regular legal fees he could never bear without government help can.