Right-Wing Extremism: German Identitarians Are Trying to Make a Comeback

Just a few kilometers south of the eastern German city of Halle is a beautiful villa, listed in the historic registry. The stately home glows in a soft pink hue, the Auenwald forest stretches out behind it.

The building on the outskirts of Schkopau was built in the 1930s, according to a recent real-estate brochure, although other sources claim that it is older than that. Back when the region was part of East Germany, a youth club belonging to the local chemical factory used the space for dance parties and summer balls.

These days, it is home to right-wing extremists.

On a recent Tuesday visit, the front gate was closed. "Please ring at the house" read a sign out front, but nobody answered. A woman peeked out the window of a smaller building belonging to the estate and vigorously shook her head – but she didn't open the door.

Unnoticed by the public, activists belonging to the Identitarian Movement (IM) have established themselves in the villa. The head of IM in Germany, a man named Philip Thaler, is officially registered as living here, and a company operated by Identitarians called Grauzone Medien also uses the site. Other names of IM activists are on the doorbell plate, as is an additional IM company called Schanze Eins. A full bookshelf could be seen through the window bearing volumes with titles like "Defend Europe."

The villa in Schkopau is just one of several properties where the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement has become established in recent years. Chemnitz, for example, is home to a place called the Center for Counterculture and Activism, while in the Austrian town of Steyregg, located not far from Linz, is the Castell Aurora, a pilgrimage site for right-wing extremists, including from Germany. Such places are extremely important when it comes to establishing networks within the scene.

Reporting by DER SPIEGEL and the public broadcaster MDR has now revealed that in all three cases, Peter Kurth – a former member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the ex-finance senator of the city-state of Berlin – provided covers funding. He is thought to have invested around 240,000 euros in IM companies from 2019 to 2022. Security officials have come to see Kurth as a significant financer for the Identitarians. Germany's primary domestic security agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has categorized the Identitarian Movement, which counts around 500 activists in Germany, as "definitely extremist," its highest threat category.

After the reports emerged about the conspiratorial meeting in Potsdam of politicians with the extreme right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, business executives and right-wing extremists, the Identitarians have now become a focus of public attention. Martin Sellmer, a major Identitarian figurehead in the German-speaking world, spoke in Potsdam of plans for "remigration" – the mass deportation and expulsion of immigrants and of Germans with migration backgrounds. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people in Germany have taken to the streets to demonstrate against right-wing extremism.

The Identitarian Movement, which made headlines several years ago as an ethnic-nationalist youth movement, recently seemed to have faded away. But in the past couple of years, it has become reestablished and started working towards a covert comeback. Its influence has broadened.

Enlarge image

Former CDU politician and ex-finance senator for the city-state of Berlin, Peter Kurth, pictured here together with AfD politician Mary Khan-Hohloch in 2022.

Photo: Mary Khan / Facebook

The Identitarians have quietly expanded their structures and established ties with other right-wing extremists, while AfD politicians have appointed Identitarians to posts in their parliamentary offices. In addition, they have received discrete funding from wealthy men like the former CDU politician Kurth, who was once seen as the future of the party's Berlin chapter.

Twelve years have now passed since the founding of the Identitarian Movement in Germany, largely inspired by the chief ideologue of the New Right Götz Kubitschek, a friend of the influential and extremist AfD politician Björn Höcke. The young activists wanted to leave the old neo-Nazi cliches behind them, wearing sneakers and hipster beards instead of jackboots. They avoided chants like "foreigners out," instead hiding their racism behind pseudo-intellectual terms like "ethnopluralism" or promulgating conspiracy theories like the "great replacement."

For Austrian Identitarian vanguard Sellner and his disciples, the goal is nothing less than cultural hegemony. Gradually, the limits of what can be said are to be expanded – to the extremist right wing. As such, the IM is working towards the same goal as the AfD, just not in Germany's state and national parliaments, but on the right-wing fringe. Changing public opinion, right-wing extremists believe, will ultimately pave the way for an extremist takeover.

IM activists have attracted attention to themselves in the past – in 2016, for example, when they gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and unfurled a banner reading "Secure Borders – Secure Future." In 2017, German, Italian and French Identitarians rented a ship and tried to block asylum-seekers seeking cross the Mediterranean to Europe. But then, the right-wing extremist hipsters went quiet. They had to abandon their first housing project in Halle in 2019, and membership numbers stagnated.

Officials across Europe began upping the pressure. Austria prohibited the IM symbol in 2021, while France banned the entire Génération Identitaire, as the racist group was called there. One after the other, social networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube blocked accounts belonging to the IM.

In Germany, the Identitarian Movement increasingly began hiding behind front organizations with harmless-sounding names like Wackre Schwaben and Neustart Kranichland. It was no longer immediately obvious who was behind certain actions – such as in 2023, when right-wing extremists displayed a banner at a Stuttgart swimming pool reading "Remigration for Safe Pools" following incidents of sexual harassment there. Or in the Bavarian town of Peutenhausen, where right-wing extremist activists proclaimed a refugee hostel as a "terrorism hotspot." In October, Identitarians climbed onto the roof of a planned asylum-seeker hostel in Dresden with a banner reading: "No Room for Foreign Takeover – #Remigration."

At the same time, the Identitarians went about establishing close ties to the AfD and the party's youth organization, called the Junge Alternative (JA) – despite the fact that the right-wing extremist group is actually on the AfD's list of groups that are incompatible with the party, meaning that those active in the IM are not officially allowed to become AfD members. Some functionaries from the AfD and JA, however, are openly supportive of the IM or have donated money to Identitarian projects. AfD politicians have received help from Identitarian activists in hanging up posters, they have posted photos of themselves together with IM activists, spoken with them in podcasts and joined them for events at Kubitschek's property in Schnellroda in Saxony-Anhalt.

The rise of the AfD has also proven advantageous for the career prospects of some Identitarians, with members of the movement having received jobs through the right-wing party on several occasions – thus finding their way into the central institutions of Germany's democracy. The AfD parliamentary group in the state of Brandenburg, for example, has employed numerous members of the movement, and still today, an Identitarian serves as the AfD press spokesman in Saxony state parliament.

IM activists also work in the Bundestag, Germany's federal parliament in Berlin. Mario Müller, a tattooed offender who has been convicted of attacks on a plainclothes police officer and on a left-wing activist, has roots in the neo-Nazi scene and he helped establish the first Identitarian housing project in Halle. Today, he works for AfD parliamentarian Jan Wenzel Schmidt. Members of parliament from other parties find it concerning that right-wing extremists have access to the protected Bundestag buildings – particularly since IM activists have long practiced martial arts or taken part in military-type exercises.

Just how close the ties are between the JA and the Identitarian Movement can be seen in the Patria Laden, the store run by the AfD's youth organization. It is operated by an Identitarian company headquartered in Rostock.

The head of the Brandenburg chapter of the JA, Anna Leisten, is openly supportive of the Identitarian Movement, participates in IM actions and wears the clothes that are fashionable in the scene. A few months ago, she traveled to Vienna to participate in a demonstration together with Martin Sellner. Indeed, IM activists hold posts in numerous JA state chapters. No wonder, then, that the two groups often chant the same slogans – such as “Homeland, Freedom, Tradition – End of Multiculturalism.”

The JA's close ties to the Identitarian Movement is one reason why an administrative court in Cologne last week ruled that German domestic intelligence officials were allowed to classify the AfD youth organization as "definitely extremist." One of those the court pointed to in its ruling was Jan Wenzel Schmidt, the former head of the JA chapter in Saxony-Anhalt and current member of the Bundestag. Schmidt has visited the IM housing project Castell Aurora in Steyregg, Austria, on numerous occasions and also supported it with a donation of 5,000 euros, as he has openly admitted.

Former Berlin Politician a Major Donor

But the largest funder uncovered to date is the former finance senator for the city-state of Berlin, Peter Kurth. Reporting by DER SPIEGEL and MDR has found that large sums of money were wired by Kurth to accounts belonging to Identitarian companies on three occasions. His ties to extremists have shocked former colleagues of the long-time Christian Democrat. Kurth did not respond to efforts to contact him.

Those looking to understand Identitarian money flows are confronted with complicated financial structures and front companies. But an examination of the convoluted transactions is worth it to understand how the Identitarians and their supporters work.

Bank documents published by German public broadcaster WDR and the platform EXIF ​​show that Kurth transferred 120,000 euros to the Identitarian company Okzident-Media UG on September 10, 2019. One day later, a six-digit sum was sent onward from that account to Austria with the reference "Credit Linz." The money was likely earmarked for the establishment of Castell Aurora, which was opened in nearby Steyregg in 2021.

A similar procedure was apparently used in Chemnitz. On October 27, 2022, information received by DER SPIEGEL indicates that Kurth wired around 70,000 euros to a real estate company that was founded by Philip Thaler, the head of the Identitarian Movement in Germany, together with local IM leader Vinzenco Richter. They purchased a property in the Chemnitz quarter of Schönau, where the IM opened a "Center for Counterculture and Activism" in late 2023. An investigation has been opened into Thaler and Richter on suspicions of money laundering in connection with the real estate deal. They declined to respond to questions about the deal. A Telegram account belonging to IM Chemnitz has described the accusations as "groundless."

A third payment by Kurth has also raised questions. On August 5, 2020, DER SPIEGEL has learned, he wired around 50,000 euros to the company Schanze Eins UG & Co. KG. The company is led by IM members and developed a system many years ago intended to cover up money flows and protect the identities of those who finance right-wing extremist real estate projects. The company's motto is: "We bring supporters and activists together.

Was the 50,000-euro payment connected to the Identitarian villa in Schkopau? Both former CDU politician Kurth and the company Schanze Eins declined to respond to questions about the payment.

Just a few weeks before Kurth's money transfer, the property in Schkopau, which is 5,000 square meters (53,820 square feet) in size, changed ownership. On July 10, 2020, a Leipzig-based company with the anodyne-sounding name of Lindenthaler Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH bought the villa for a price of 545,000 euros. That company then rented the property to the IM company Schanze Eins, which has transformed it into a kind of IM center. In addition to IM chief Thaler, who is registered as living at the site, companies linked to the Identitarian Movement – ​​such as Grauzone Medien GmbH – are also headquartered at the address. The villa also apparently serves as a storage facility for right-wing extremist books and IM paraphernalia.

When contacted by DER SPIEGEL and MDR, the director of the Lindenthaler Verwaltungsgesellschaft, Holger Grentzebach, claimed to have only learned of the right-wing extremist leanings of his renters after the fact. He says he doesn't share the political views of the Identitarians, but also says that he is unable to simply cancel the rental contract. Grentzebach, however, is also a shareholder – together with two IM activists – in gray zone media, a fact that he claims is rooted solely in business interests. His stake in the company, he says, is “an investment, no more and no less” – as is, he says, the purchase of the villa.

The deal was apparently brokered by IT entrepreneur Nicolas Schulmann, who attracted attention for links to the Identitarians once before. In 2019, he apparently inspected a castle in the Saxony town of Reinsberg in which the Identitarians had an interest. Schulmann was apparently seen in Reinsberg together with IM members, whereupon the municipality exercised its right of first refusal and purchased the castle. Schulmann, who had, according to the land registry, also engaged in negotiations pertaining to the purchase of the villa in Schkopau, said in a statement that his interest in the castle in Reinsberg had been purely of a business nature.

A Party for Leading Identitarians

The Identitarians are trying to play down the importance of the villa in Schkopau. IM leader Thaler says that the property is used by a variety of different people and companies. "Individual residents of the property were or are active in the Identitarian Movement, while others are not." The property is "decidedly not an IM project" and it has "absolutely no interest in visibility." The head of Grauzone Medien echoed the statement verbatim.

The German government, however, has categorized the property as a "joint housing project for IM leadership," as a recent response to a query from Left Party parliamentarian Martina Renner notes. She wonders how long officials have known about the property. "And what was done to inform the municipality in a timely manner about the possibility of exercising its right of first refusal?"

Just how close ties have become between the former CDU senator Kurth and the Identitarian Movement was on display in July 2023. Kurth held a summer party on the rooftop terrace of his apartment in the Mitte district of Berlin. His guests included numerous AfD politicians and New Right thinkers like Kubitschek – in addition, apparently, to leading Identitarian Martin Sellner, IM chief Thaler and the Chemnitz IM activist Richter.

Security officials view the evening soiree as one of the most important right-wing extremist networking events of last year – even more important that the Potsdam meeting that triggered nationwide protests and galvanized German political leaders.

For the Identitarian Movement and its activists, things could now become more uncomfortable. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, a member of the center-right Social Democrats, intends to outfit security officials with more legal powers to investigate right-wing extremist money flows and structures.

In the Bundestag, Faeser announced a tough approach: "We will break up right-wing extremist networks, she said. Outright bans, she added, could also be part of the arsenal.