A MAYOR in eastern Germany has been given round-the-clock police protection after receiving death threats from local neo-Nazis.
Reinhard Knaack, mayor of the northeastern village of Lallendorf, hit the headlines for refusing to present a local neo-Nazi couple with a certificate and €500 from German president Christian Wülff.
Local couple Petra and Marc Müller are entitled to the certificate and the cash under an established practice that automatically makes the German president the honorary godfather of a family’s seventh child.
Mayor Knaack refused to handle the award claiming that Mr Müller works in a “eugenics institution” while his wife is responsible for a far-right women’s group.
President Wülff’s office sent the award by post, saying it was intended for the child and not the parents.
The West German state established the award for every family’s seventh child in 1949 and some 76,440 such awards have been bestowed since then.
Critics have complained that the practice recalls the “Mother’s Cross”, the Nazi-era award for mothers who gave birth to multiple offspring.
The current row escalated at the weekend when some 10 members of the local far-right scene entered Mr Knaack’s garden.
He called the police and the group was dispersed after a scuffle, but since then a police car and two police officers are watching the mayor’s house day and night.
“I would be lying if I said it hadn’t left a mark on me,” said Mr Knaack. “It affects me personally and my family, we definitely feel it is intended as a threat.” Senior politicians in the state have attacked the campaign against Mr Knaack as a “precursor to terrorism”.
“With this kind of behaviour, extreme-right groups are trying to spread fear throughout the countryside among those who resist this extremism,” said Mr Lorenz Caffier, interior minister for the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Official figures show a dramatic rise in extreme-right-related crime in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg Vorpommern, one of Germany’s weakest economic regions.
After just four annual cases in the years 2008 and 2009, the number of far-right crimes has jumped tenfold to 40 so far this year. State officials who observe far-right groups say neo-Nazis are pursuing a deliberate intimidation strategy against anyone who takes a stand against extreme-right activity.
In reaction to the rise in attacks, the state government is calling to revive a plan to ban the far-right National Democratic Party.