Small German Town Unites to Battle Neo-Nazis

The countdown is on. With less than a day remaining, residents of Delmenhorst near Bremen are waiting with bated breath to see if efforts to raise the 3.4 million euros ($4.2 million) to buy a local hotel have been successful.

Otherwise, the now empty Hotel am Stadtpark will become the property of a neo-Nazi group.

In the past week, the ticker on the Web site www.fuer-delmenhorst.de detailing donations has steadily risen. As of Tuesday afternoon, it reached 679,486 euros.

Still, even with a matching town donation of 2 million euros, Delmenhorst is coming up short. But townsfolk said they remain hopeful.

"Every euro makes a difference," Mayor Carsten Schwettmann said in a statement. "It is a sign of the solidarity and commitment of the town."

"Nein" to neo-Nazis

The initiative began after Hamburg lawyer Jürgen Rieger made an offer to buy the hotel, which is prominently situated across from the town hall in the center of the town.

Rieger made an offer for the building on behalf of the Wilhelm Tietjen Foundation for Fertilization LTD, a mysterious group registered in London that promotes racial purity. The organization is named for a rich Nazi from Bremen who died childless in 2002.

The lawyer, who has defended a number of neo-Nazis including Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel and is known for speaking at neo-Nazi rallies honoring Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, reportedly aims to transform the hotel into a neo-Nazi center for research and conferences.

Rieger, who owns property in Hamburg, Thuringia, a former German military building in Dörverden near Bremen as well as in Sweden, has not said publicly why he wants to buy the hotel in the Lower Saxony town of fewer than 80,000 people. He was unavailable for comment.

Fighting fire with fire

Town officials said there is little they can do to prevent the sale other than offer the 2 million euros from their already-stretched budget, adding that their efforts to convince property owner Günter Mergel not to sell to Rieger have been unsuccessful.

"We cannot stop the current owner from selling to whomever he wants," Schwettmann told reporters. "But I am proud of the solidarity the townspeople have shown in the past days."

Mergel, who told Focus magazine that the empty 100-room hotel is bleeding him dry financially, said he has no choice: "I am up to my neck in hot water."

"A crazy idea"

As a result, locals took the burden into their own hands. They have staged protests, held fundraisers such as "barbeques against the right" and rallies featuring rock music. They have created petitions and Weblogs and planned exhibitions. More than 3,000 people from the town and around Germany have donated to Delmenhorst's cause via a Web page that launched on Aug. 4.

"It might be a crazy idea," said town resident Günter Feith, a 58-year-old architect and founder of the initiative. "But we are doing it anyway. We have to."

Feith said at first, there were doubts about the chance of successfully derailing the sale. But now, as thousands of euros pour in, those doubts are dissipating.

"We have a good chance of succeeding," he said. "Besides, I don't want to think about what happens if we don't."