Horst Mahler
Horst Mahler | |
---|---|
Freie Universität Berlin | |
Occupation(s) | Lawyer, political activist |
Organizations |
Horst Mahler (born 23 January 1936) is a German former lawyer and political activist.
In April 2017, Mahler was ordered back to prison for a further three and a half years. On 18 April 2017, he fled the Federal Republic of Germany, hoping to avoid execution of the sentence.[2] His attempt to receive political asylum in Hungary was rejected, and he was deported back to Germany, where he was arrested and put back in jail to finish serving his sentence.[3]
Early life and career
Mahler was born at
Mahler took his
Far-left wing activity
Early political activism
Prior to 1960, Mahler was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the leftist students' association Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS).[6] He was expelled from the SPD in 1960, along with other members of the SDS, who were no longer an SPD youth wing but had become a radical left-wing group. He joined the new organisation's call for "extra-parliamentary opposition", or forceful resistance.[7] Mahler joined the Außerparlamentarische Opposition in 1964. He was one of the founders of the Republican Club, a West Berlin leftist organisation established in 1966.[citation needed]
After the attempted assassination of
Mahler became active as a lawyer who defended left-wing students facing
Founding of the RAF
In 1970, he became a founding member of the leftist group, the Red Army Faction (RAF). Having earlier befriended Ensslin and Baader, Mahler helped plot to spring Baader from prison after his arrest that year. Once Baader escaped, the three, along with Ulrike Meinhof, committed a series of bank robberies in September 1970.[10] The four fled to Jordan and trained in guerrilla tactics with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.[11]
After his return from Jordan, Mahler was arrested with fellow RAF members
Imprisonment
In prison, Mahler wrote a manifesto. The rest of the RAF, however, resoundingly rejected it, effectively expelling him from the group. Mahler now advocated the policies of the
In 1980, Mahler was freed from prison after serving ten years of his fourteen-year sentence. This was largely due to the efforts of his lawyer,
Switch to far-right politics
Beginning
Mahler made the acquaintance of political theorists Iring Fetscher and Günter Rohrmoser [de], who visited him in prison. While the German courts noted a change in Mahler's political position in the mid-1980s,[8] he first gained attention for it at Rohrmoser's 70th birthday celebration on 1 December 1997. There Mahler gave a speech declaring that Germany was "occupied" and had to free itself from its "debt bondage" to reestablish its national identity.[13]
Mahler took little role in politics until 1998, when an article by him called Zweite Steinzeit ("Second Stone Age")
In the German people as free self-confidence, the unity of God and Man appears in the Folk-community knowing itself. This is the existing negation of the Jewish Principle and of the haggler/bargainer as its worldly shape.[16]
NPD
Mahler joined the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD) in 2000.[6] In 2001, the German government began a process to attempt to ban the NPD, during which time Mahler acted as an attorney for the party. The government, citing accusations of Volksverhetzung ("hate speech") against the party, petitioned the court to allow them to seize Mahler's computer assets. Mahler successfully defeated the attempt.[8]
In 2003, after the official case to ban the NPD had been rejected by the German courts, Mahler left the party.
Since late 2003
Mahler was involved in founding the Society for the Rehabilitation of Those persecuted for Refutation of the Holocaust (Verein zur Rehabilitierung der wegen Bestreitens des Holocaust Verfolgten, VRBHV) on
Since 2003, Mahler has faced numerous charges in German courts, including a charge of Volksverhetzung in connection with statements he made regarding the
On 8 April 2004, the local court of
In an interview in 2005 with the Israeli reporter, Naftali Glicksberg, Mahler claimed that he is partly of
In November 2007, Mahler was facing new Volksverhetzung charges stemming from an interview for
On 23 November 2007, the Amtsgericht in Cottbus sentenced Mahler to six months' imprisonment without parole for having given a Hitler salute when reporting to prison for a nine-month term the previous year. Mahler claimed to have performed the salute as a "testimonial of his worldview" ("Zeugnis seiner Weltanschauung").[23] Mahler was defended by Sylvia Stolz for a period.[24] Stolz was also convicted and imprisoned in 2008.[25]
On 21 February 2009, Mahler was sentenced by a Munich court to six years' imprisonment without possibility of reduction or bail. During the reading of the verdict, the judge said that Mahler had proven "not able to be re-educated" and declared that the "nationalist rattle" of and "nonsense spread" by Horst Mahler should stop.[26] On 11 March a Potsdam court then sentenced the 73-year-old Mahler to an additional five years' imprisonment for Holocaust denial and banalization of Nazi war crimes. Mahler was adjudged an escape risk, so the sentence was carried out immediately.[27] He was released in August 2015 owing to ill health; the lower part of his leg was amputated because of an infection.[28]
During April 2017, Mahler is believed to have fled Germany. His sentence was lengthened following offences committed while he was in prison. In a video posted on
Mahler was released from prison on 27 October 2020.[32]
In film
Mahler appears in the film Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst, 1978), where he is interviewed in his prison cell for television.[33] According to an April 1979 review in The New York Times by Vincent Canby, Mahler "speaks eloquently about the roots of postwar radicalism, though he now disavows terrorism that, he says, has become no different from the ills that prompted the left's original frustration and dissent."[34]
Mahler is interviewed in the first episode of the television series The Living Dead (1995) written and narrated by Adam Curtis, in which Mahler talks about his father, emergence of the RAF and his departure from it. He is also interviewed in Curtis' 2021 documentary Can't Get You Out of My Head.[citation needed]
In the film Der Baader Meinhof Complex (2008), directed by Uli Edel, Mahler is played by the actor Simon Licht. Mahler is the subject of the documentary Die Anwälte - Eine deutsche Geschichte (The Lawyers - A German History, 2009), directed by Birgit Schulz. The film charts the life and career of Mahler and two other RAF lawyers, Otto Schily and Hans-Christian Ströbele, both during and after their association with the RAF.[35]
Notes
References
- ^ (in German) Mahler kein Anwalt mehr, n-tv.de, 19 August 2009.
- ^ "Trotz Haftstrafe: Horst Mahler bleibt auf freiem Fuß - Störungsmelder". Störungsmelder (in German). 29 March 2017. Retrieved 19 April 2017.
- ^ a b "Hungary hands over Holocaust denier Horst Mahler to Germany". Deutsche Welle. Bonn, Germany. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, AFP. 13 June 2017. Retrieved 9 September 2017.
- ^ ISBN 9780195372755.
- ^ "Biography, Horst Mahler" (in German). Lebendiges virtuelles Museum Online. Retrieved 6 November 2007.
- ^ "Ausserparlamentarische Opposition" (in German). Lebendiges virtuelles Museum Online. Retrieved 6 November 2007.
- ^ a b c d "Horst Mahler: A Radical Biography". German Law Journal. 1 August 2001. pp. section II. Archived from the original on 27 February 2009. Retrieved 6 November 2007.
- ^ "Linksterrorismus" (in German). Lebendiges virtuelles Museum Online. Archived from the original on 14 April 2005. Retrieved 6 November 2007.
- ^ a b c "Horst Mahler". This is Baader-Meinhof. Archived from the original on 29 October 2007. Retrieved 6 November 2007.
- ^ "The Baader-Meinhof Gang - Meinhof: Terrorist to Journalist". CrimeLibrary. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 6 November 2007.
- ^ Thorsten Thaler (8 May 1998). "Gerhard-Schröder-Biographie: Horst Mahler stellt das Buch eines Konservativen vor Hoffnung keimt im Verborgenen" (in German). Junge Freiheit. Retrieved 7 November 2007.
- ^ Mahler, Horst. "Rede Horst Mahlers zum 70. Geburtstag Günter Rohrmosers" (in German). Archived from the original on 19 December 2007. Retrieved 7 November 2007.
- ^ Horst Mahler, Zweite Steinzeit Archived 27 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Junge Freiheit, 17 April 1998.
- ^ 'Former left-wing radical Horst Mahler joins the neo-fascist NPD'
- ^ H. Mahler 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question - Discovery of God instead of Jewish Hatred', March 25, 2001.
- ^ a b Mahler, Horst (11 November 2003). "Society for the Rehabilitation of Those persecuted for Refutation of the Holocaust". National Journal. Archived from the original on 18 November 2007. Retrieved 7 November 2007.
- ^ "Neo-Nazi blames US for 11 September". BBC News. 13 January 2003. Retrieved 7 November 2007.
- ^ "Passport withdrawn from German neo-Nazi Horst Mahler". World Jewish Congress. 27 January 2006. Retrieved 3 May 2017.
- ^ (in German) Berufsverbot für Horst Mahler, Die Welt, 20 April 2004.
- ^ רועי הולר (Roy Haller) (3 April 2005). שונאים, סיפור אמיתי [Hate, True Story]. Ynet (in Hebrew). Tel Aviv. Retrieved 9 September 2017.
- ^ "Charges filed against German extreme-rightist Horst Mahler". European Jewish Press. 5 November 2007. Archived from the original on 7 November 2007. Retrieved 7 November 2007.
- ^ "Sechs Monate für Hitlergruß" (in German). Die Zeit/dpa. 23 November 2007.
- ^ "NETZEITUNG DEUTSCHLAND: Mahler-Anwältin glorifiziert Nazis vor Gericht". 3 November 2007. Archived from the original on 3 November 2007.
- ^ Mannheimer Morgen Archived 19 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine 19 March 2009. Absurde Ausschweifungen.
- ^ Handelsblatt, newspaper, Germany 25 February 2009
- ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Mahler zu hoher Haftstrafe verurteilt 11 March 2009
- ^ a b Knight, Ben (20 April 2017). "Holocaust-denying German lawyer Horst Mahler on the run". DW. Germany. Retrieved 2 May 2017.
- ^ Litschke, Konrad (15 May 2017). "Horst Mahler ist festgenommen". taz (in German). Retrieved 9 September 2017.
- ^ Wangemann, Ulrich (15 May 2017). "Ungarn bestätigt Festnahme von Horst Mahler". Märkische Allgemeine (in German). Potsdam, Germany. Archived from the original on 9 September 2017. Retrieved 9 September 2017.
- ^ Charter, David (15 May 2017). "Hungary denies asylum to neo-Nazi on the run". The Times. London. Retrieved 15 May 2017.
- ^ "Horst Mahler aus Haft entlassen". 27 October 2020.
- ^ "Germany in Autumn". BFI. Archived from the original on 11 August 2016. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
- ^ Canby, Vincent (5 April 1979). "Film: 13 Directors Make 'Germany in Autumn': After the Fall". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
- ^ "The Lawyers - A German Story". 19 November 2009 – via www.imdb.com.
External links
- Media related to Horst Mahler at Wikimedia Commons