· German extremists try to buy hotel as rallying point
· Residents raise cash to keep out far-right group

Samuel Loewenberg in Berlin
Friday August 11, 2006
The Guardian

Residents in a small town in Lower Saxony are frantically trying to raise €3.4m (more than £2m) to buy an empty hotel before it is taken over by a rightwing extremist organisation that reportedly plans to use it as a neo-Nazi rallying point.
The ultra-right group expected to purchase the hotel in the next few days is led by Jürgen Rieger, a Hamburg lawyer and well-known neo-Nazi. Mr Rieger is infamous in Germany for defending prominent Holocaust deniers and leading an annual rally in Bavaria in honour of Rudolf Hess, one of Hitler's top deputies.

He is purchasing the hotel on behalf of his London-registered company, the Wilhelm Tietjen Foundation for Fertilisation Ltd. The firm is named after a former Nazi who made millions in the stock market and died four years ago. Mr Rieger is known to be a strong proponent of creating a master race, and also heads a group called the Germanic Faith Community for Life Creation.

It is not known why Mr Rieger chose to base his project in Delmenhorst, a town with fewer than 80,000 inhabitants located near Bremen. He could not be reached for comment.
The town of Delmenhorst has a diverse population including Turks and Russians; some dozens of Jews live there. On Monday about 3,000 townspeople turned out to demonstrate against the proposed sale.

There is nothing to legally prevent Mr Rieger's group from buying the hotel, which is opposite the town hall, so concerned Delmenhorsters are trying to raise enough money to buy it for themselves before the August 15 deadline.

With just days to go, the ad hoc anti- fascist group has raised €520,000 from those living in the town and further afield in Germany. "I called friends and they called friends, and it just snowballed," said the group's co-founder, Günter Feith, a 58-year-old architect who has lived in Delmenhorst since he was a child.

"If we are not successful, and this Nazi group moves into town, people here won't be able to live their normal lives," said Feith. "I don't know if we can win, but we have to try."