18. Februar 2005 By William Pratt
As German Interior Minister Otto Schily knows, May 8 has a special place on the calendar this year. The day marks the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. “The attention of the whole world will be directed at Germany,“ Schily said.
But when Schily thinks about that day, one thought haunts him. “It would be unbearable if the Nazi dictatorship were glorified or soft-pedaled during right-wing extremist gatherings and the victims of this regime were subjected to ridicule,“ he said last Friday.
Schily expressed his worries as he outlined plans to ban assemblies at historically symbolic places. Such sites could include the new Holocaust memorial in Berlin or former Nazi concentration camps. Expressions of glorification could include praise of Nazi leaders on their birthdays.
As the week progressed, other members of the national coalition, made up of Social Democrats and Greens, added their suggestions to the proposal. The new plan, which will be introduced in the German parliament on Friday, would enable the interior minister to ban demonstrations at “a place that serves as a clear memorial to victims of inhumane actions.“ The order would have to be approved by the German government and the Bundesrat, which represents the states on national issues.
The immediate reason for the legislation is a plan by the right-wing extremist National Democratic Party to march through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on May 8. But Schily said that the effort was part of a long-planned revision of laws and that he had just moved up the effort.
For the past five years, the National Democrats have been a menace to the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The government launched an effort in 2001 to ban their party. In Germany, a party may be banned if the country's highest court determines that the group wants to tear down the country's democratic order.
But the application was thrown out in 2003 because the government had planted more than two dozen informants in the party's ranks who served as potential provocateurs.
In September, the National Democrats captured 9.2 percent of the vote in elections held in the eastern state of Saxony. In the parliament there, the party has proceeded to push its nationalist agenda, which includes a protest of the “bombing holocaust“ it says the Allies waged on Dresden during World War II.
One legal expert questioned whether the government's plans would be constitutional. Christian Pestalozza told dpa that the proposal was “too narrowly“ worded. He said the country's top court interpreted the right to free speech this way: “General laws may not be directed against specific expressions of opinion.“
Der Ausverkauf an den Börsen geht 
Fortsetzungsroman Kleine Fische von Martina Wildner, Teil 16
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