Christoph Drewer was one of the most aggressive and radical among the neo-Nazis in Dortmund.

The former member of the federal executive committee of the party “The Rights” was convicted of bodily harm, damage to property or sedition on several occasions.

In the scene, Drewer is considered a hero.

But no sooner had his comrades greeted him after his most recent release from prison when he turned his back on them - in order to find new “living space in the east” in Chemnitz.

Pure burger

Political correspondent in North Rhine-Westphalia.

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    Stefan Locke

    Correspondent for Saxony and Thuringia based in Dresden.

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      Drewer is not the first right-wing extremist in Dortmund to come to the Saxon city.

      At the end of last year, Michael Brück, one of the leading right-wing extremists in Germany, broke his tent in the Dorstfeld district of Dortmund.

      For years Brück and his like-minded people tried to turn Dorstfeld into a “Nazi Kiez”.

      Brück ran an online mail order business with the openly anti-Jewish name "antisem.it", organized demonstrations or street actions and sat on the Dortmund city council for "Dierechte".

      It was founded after the ban on comradeship “Nationaler Resistance Dortmund” in 2012 in order to be able to “continue uninterrupted” the previous neo-Nazi activities under the protection of party privilege, as it is called by the North Rhine-Westphalian constitution protection agency.

      "Germans among Germans"

      Because of people like Brück, Dortmund was previously considered a neo-Nazi stronghold in West Germany. But at the end of 2020, the 30-year-old Brück spoke openly and disillusioned about his political failure in Dortmund in an interview with the “Closing Up in Central Germany” initiative, which promotes a collection of right-wing extremists in East Germany. In the regions in the west it is not possible “to reach broad sections of the population in the medium term”, said Brück, they were “ultimately lost”. He campaigned for resettlement to the east, where “Germans could still live among Germans”. That is better than “if you keep running your head against the wall and you know you will not achieve anything anyway”.

      The Dortmund police rate the exodus of big names like Brück as a success of the consistent work of their “Soko Rechts”. Police President Gregor Lange founded the unit six years ago because neo-Nazis were increasingly militant in the city on the northern edge of the Ruhr area. Since then, the investigation has led to 105 convictions against 46 right-wing extremist offenders. Leading figures of the party “The Right” such as Siegfried Borchardt, Sascha Krolzig or Christoph Drewer received imprisonment.

      The neo-Nazi scene in Dortmund was weakened in terms of personnel and organization, said Police President Lange on the sixth anniversary of the establishment of Soko in March. "With its propagated fight for the streets, for the parliaments and the heads of the organized right-wing extremism in Dortmund has failed on all points for the time being." But right-wing extremist hatred remains a nationwide danger to be taken seriously. Especially since Brück and Drewer are hardcore right-wing extremists who obviously rely on being able to be active from the east under better conditions.