Published: 9 April 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
GERMANY'S MOST NOTORIOUS far-right politician, Bjorn Hocke, a man who has called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin "a monument of shame", was furious when he woke up one morning to find a section of the memorial built to scale outside his bedroom window.
It was November 2017. Hocke sued the artist who had secretly rented the neighbouring property and prepared the stunt over many months. He tried to have him evicted. He even launched criminal proceedings against him. But to no avail. The rental lease is open-ended.
And the replica of the Holocaust memorial remains.
But where civil and criminal proceedings have failed, a state prosecutor has stepped in, it emerged on Wednesday. The prosecutor's office in Hocke's eastern home state, Thuringia, is investigating the artist, Philipp Ruch, on suspicion of "forming a criminal association", a legal provision known as Paragraph 129, which gives the state far-reaching surveillance rights and is normally applied to criminal groups and suspected extremists.
The investigation, which was revealed in the answer to a routine parliamentary question, is now raising questions about whether the law is being leveraged by far-right sympathisers to crack down on their opponents.
FULL STORY Artist investigated for building Holocaust memorial by far-right leader’s home (SMH/NYT)
Holocaust memorial replica stunt shines light on rightwing radicalism in Germany (Guardian)
Art collective likened to ‘terrorist organisation’ by far-right politician Björn Hocke
Photo: A replica of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial built by a political art group next door to the home of Björn Höcke, a far-right politician (New York Times)
