Berlin police tighten security for neo-Nazi march after Charlottesville attack

Up to 1,000 neo-Nazis from Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic are expected to march through Berlin this weekend to commemorate the death of Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Authorities say a counter-demonstration opposing the rightwing extremism has also been registered.

While Berlin police said Saturday’s demonstrations could not be likened to recent events at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, special measures would be taken to protect both marches from possible terror attacks.

“We have certainly adjusted our security concept in the light of recent events in Charlottesville, Barcelona, London and Berlin,” said Carsten Müller.

The march has been registered near the site of a former prison where 93-year-old Hess hanged himself on 17 August 1987.

The rally faces a series of stipulations, meaning that participants will have to worship their idol without naming or showing images of the man who acted as Germany’s deputy between 1933 and 1941.

A ban on Nazi symbols and language codified by allied forces in 1949 outlaws the display of swastikas and SS insignia at far-right rallies, while paragraph 140 of the German penal code prohibits the “glorification” of the National Socialist regime.

Organisers of the march are trying to appeal against a further set of police stipulations, a final version of which will be announced shortly before the event.

According to a report in Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, they include bans on marching music, the reading aloud of lists of “political enemies”, the display of more than one flag per 50 protesters and the use of more than one drum per 100 people.

On a website created by a neo-Nazi group for Saturday’s march, the organisers also advise their followers to avoid the euphemism “peace flyer”, a reference to Hess’s solo flight to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the Duke of Hamilton.

In recent months, neo-Nazi groups have tried to promote Saturday’s march in the Spandau district by means of illegal flyposters and graffiti around the German capital, as well as fake police posters calling for assistance in finding Hess’s “murderer”.

Berlin’s constitution exempts national socialist events aiming to incite hatred from the general right to assembly, but the march’s professed intention of calling for further research into the circumstances of Hess’s death is likely to have played a part in authorities allowing it to go ahead.

Local politicians, church leaders and union organisers in Spandau have sought to ban the march, with one local councillor of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party citing the possibility of street fights between neo-Nazis and militant leftwingers.

“Spandau must not become a second Hamburg”, said the CDU’s Kai Wegner, referencing recent violence around the G20 summit in Germany’s second-largest city.

Like the neo-Nazi marchers, the anti-fascist counter-demonstrators will have to meet certain stipulations, including a change to their planned route, with police trying to keep the marches separate while also having to respect the counter-demonstrators’ right to be within earshot and sight of the rival rally.

According to Christoph Kopke, a sociologist specialising in police history, Saturday’s march illustrates the challenge facing police in a changing political environment.

“Until the 1990s, German neo-Nazi marches tended to be smaller than their counter-demonstrations. The police’s main task was usually to protect the main demonstration from the less predictable counter-demonstration”, he said.

“But in recent years, rightwing extremists are managing more and more often to organise large rallies, and they are more militant. The police will have to adjust their tactics accordingly.”