How to become a Neo-Nazi in East-Germany’s Saxony
Posted by Thomas Klikauer
By the end of 2024, the deeply racist Volksgemeinschaft of a few East-German Neo-Nazis was crudely interrupted. Police officers of Germany’s BKA – a kind of German-style CIA – arrested right-wing terrorists in the eastern German state of Saxony.
This time, police hit a violent Neo-Nazi squad that, euphemistically, calls itself “Saxon Separatists”. Yet, German Neo-Nazis prefer, for obvious reasons, the squad’s initials “SS” – Hitler’s mass killers.
On that day, eight young Neo-Nazi men were arrested on suspicion of terrorism. Unsurprisingly, the sweep included three AfD-officials from Saxony.
The AfD remains Germany’s most successful neo-fascist political party ever since, the Austrian Untergefreite Adolf Hitler became the Führer of Germany.
Yet, it was on a cold winter Thursday in late 2024 – not 1924. Two days after a large-scale police operation in a neighboring village, further arrests were made. This time, police arrested two of eight suspected Neo-Nazi terrorists.
In a rural town, a local was looking over to the other side of the street toward a typical war memorial commemorating 23 so-called “fallen” soldiers of the First World War.
Ideologically, the term “fallen” carries connotation to slipping – wherein one can get up easily. In reality, these young men were gunned down by WWI’ industrial-style warfare – cold, mechanically, and brutally.
These young people suddenly appeared about four years ago in the remote town. Camouflaged as innocent students, the SS-Neo-Nazis pretended to be interested in local history.
They even cleaned up the local war monument – celebrating militarism. The glorification of war has always been an indispensable part of Nazism (1920s to 1945) and Neo-Nazi ideology (post-1945)
“They were extremely friendly,” local recalls. “We even thought that they were great”. In the end, some locals even donated money for the restoration of the war monument assisting their own infiltration by Neo-Nazis.
However, one of them had left his telephone number behind. His name was Kurt Hättasch – a Neo-Nazi and AfD operative with free access to Saxony’s parliament.
Kurt Hättasch (born in 1999) was also a local AfD Führer in Saxony’s Grimma city council. Simultaneously, he was a leading member of the Saxon Separatists Neo-Nazi terror organization.
In November 2024, he was arrested for plotting far right terror attacks in Saxony.
Kurt Hättasch was the last one to be arrested in the police’s large-scale action. The Neo-Nazi was arrested on behalf of Germany’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office – together with seven other men, aged between 21 and 25 years. Nazism tends to be youthful.
Seven other people were also questioned. The existence of the Neo-Nazi platoon shows, time and again, that Neo-Nazism never comes as the much-acclaimed lone wolf. Neo-Nazis in fact, come in brutal cohorts and killer squads.
Police operations also took place in nearby Poland and Austria. Germany’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office accuses the Neo-Nazis of forming and supporting a right-wing extremist terrorist group – the Saxon Separatists (SS).
They have been preparing for what the Neo-Nazis call “Day X”. The squadron planned a far-right upheaval for which they had undertaken paramilitary trainings for four years.
The Neo-Nazi group also scheduled “ethnic cleansing” in Saxony – race-based mass killings.
By force of arms, the group then wanted to seize geographical territories in Saxony and carry out further rounds of ethnic cleansing.
It is reminiscent of Hitler’s SS that declared areas “Judenfrei” – having killed the local Jewish population.
In their Neo-Nazi chat rooms, the leader of the squad has talked about a new “Holocaust”. The entire East Germany was to be cleansed of immigrants. The Untermensch in Nazi and Neo-Nazi terminology was to be eliminated.
To achieve their inhuman goals, they had already procured equipment, arms, camouflage suits, combat helmets, gas masks and protective vests. Unregistered sharp weapons and other killing instruments were found in the possession of several of the accused.
Meanwhile, Germany’s investigating judges at the Federal Court of Justice have confirmed all arrest warrants against Neo-Nazi terrorists in Germany.
When the police arrived at Hättasch’s compound in the early morning fog, a secluded house on a narrow dirt road in the remote village near Grimma came to light.
The man in his mid-twenties was seen carrying a gun. Shots were fired.
Hättasch was injured in the jaw and had to be delivered to the hospital. This was not what the Neo-Nazi platoon had planned.
Yet, Neo-Nazi terrorist Kurt Hättasch is not just anyone. The metalworker and hunter was previously the head of the AfD faction in the Grimma’s city council. He was also on the board of the local district association.
Since the end of October 2024, the Neo-Nazi was treasurer of the AfD’s youth outfit in Saxony, the so-called Young Alternative – featuring Nazi symbolism in their organization’s crest. More links between Neo-Nazism and the AfD are hardly needed to prove that the AfD is a Neo-Nazi party.
That is not all when it comes to the far right AfD. Two other detainees – Kevin Richter and Hans-Georg Pförtsch – were also part of the AfD. So much for the self-proclaimed “distance” of the AfD to Neo-Nazis. In reality, the AfD is a Neo-Nazi party.
Meanwhile, at an AfD event in Grimma in May 2022, Hans-Georg Pförtsch and Jörg S. took part. Rather unsurprisingly for East-Germany, when one listens to locals at Grimma, no-one had noticed anything.
In addition to the local Neo-Nazi Führer Hättasch, the platoon’s Richter was also present at the aforementioned war memorial clean-up. Locals claim they didn’t notice anything extreme about the Neo-Nazi-SS cohort.
Predictably, the director of the local youth orchestra in which the Neo-Nazis Hättasch and Richter were playing the trumpet and flugelhorn for many years, has seen “zero signs” of far right terrorism in them.
For some reason, people in East-Germany don’t seem to notice Neo-Nazism – even when it stares at them into their face.
The Leipziger Volkszeitung is an East-German local newspaper. Innocently, the paper reported on a “successful” New Year’s concert in 2019 where trumpeter and Neo-Nazi Führer Kurt Hättasch once again took center stage. In short, Neo-Nazis seem to be rather successful in East-Germany.
Obviously, local neighbors on the Neo-Nazi side also and rather unsurprisingly, have not noticed anything about the Neo-Nazis.
They even thought that one of the Neo-Nazis was a “highly respectable man” engaging in the local hunting club. So, here it is: Neo-Nazis are respectable men.
Locals even praised Neo-Nazi Führer Kurt Hättasch. All of this is not untypical of East-Germans in 2025. And for Saxony where roughly 1/3 would vote for the Neo-Nazi AfD party.
Another neighbor says, Neo-Nazi Richter was inconspicuous. At times, he heard him playing music. Lovely to have such nice Neo-Nazi boys around.
Even the currently acting Mayor of Grimma, says that the allegations are “unimaginable”. She claims that she was “deeply shaken”. Really? How can this be?
Meanwhile, the far-right group was training for a Neo-Nazi coup d’état to re-install their beloved race-based Nazi Volksgemeinschaft.
Yet, not all is lost in the eastern German states. There are also locals who have been working for a more democratic city.
Some have even been running as mayoral candidates challenging the prevailing right-wing trend in East-Germany. Of course, all too often this is without success.
It is not uncommon in East-Germany where local Neo-Nazis and the AfD receive tremendous support. And when their local Neo-Nazis mutated into terrorists, no-one has noticed.
Meanwhile, far right activities, right-wing marches, the rise of the AfD, etc., has created an atmosphere in which – supposedly – no-one noticed the rise of hard core Neo-Nazi terrorists.
“It just doesn’t bother anyone” says a local social worker in Grimma. Yet, over ten years ago, there were already early warning signs at Hättasch’s grammar school in Grimma.
At the model boarding school, Hättasch was drifting deeper into East-Germany’s well-established far right.
At that time, the teenager was considered to be a loner. Yet, he started to express racists and misanthropic views. Worse – even for East-German standards – he had more blatant views than others (read: expressing Neo-Nazi views is not unusual, just do not make it too obvious). Meanwhile, there had been discussions with Hättasch, his family, and the school.
Despite this, there were fights in the schoolyard and stickers of the far-right Identitarians that started to appear. Even the local city council was aware of these incidents. But no-one reacted. On the contrary, those who pointed out that there was right-wing radicalization were insulted.
Meanwhile, Hättasch immersed himself further and further into East-Germany’s the far-right. In 2018, an Identitarian banner appeared. It had the inscription, “spit in the soup of left-wing teachers”.
To Neo-Nazis, left-wing means anyone fancying democracy. The banner was hung at his high-school which was, officially, a “school without racism”.
Tellingly, the school without racism did not react. Instead, a local sponsor of the school without racism program withdrew. Around the same time, a Neo-Nazi group in the city began to paint over Anti-fascist graffiti.
It was done by a Neo-Nazi outfit that called itself Gang of German Painters or “Bund Deutscher Maler” (BDM). Just like the Nazi initials “SS” for Saxon Separatists, the initials “BDM” are yet another remake. This time, of Hitler’s BDM, the “Bund Deutscher Mädel”.
Just like AfD-man Hättasch’s SS that, on the surface, appears to mean Saxony Separatists. For German Neo-Nazis, it means Hitler’s SS.
Saxony’s BDM, just like Kurt Hättasch and Kevin Richter’s local SS-squad, posted videos on the Internet. One video is accompanied by a Neo-Nazi ballad with anti-Semitic lyrics carbon copied from Hitler’s Nazis. It came with the appeal, “Do something for Germany!”
Despite all this, no-one seems to have noticed the far right radicalization in Grimma. Some locals claim, they didn’t know about the video and the BDM group’s name.
And the school management of AfD-Neo-Nazi Kurt Hättasch’s high-school only admits that Hättasch used to attend the high-school.
Yet, there are civil-society projects that offer de-radicalization to individuals. To what extent this was used for Hättasch, the school – tellingly – refused to answer. Perhaps these programs exist on paper only. It makes the school look good.
Undeterred and undisturbed by the school, the local city council, and police, Hättasch and Richter’s AfD-Neo-Nazi careers continued on an ascending trajectory.
Some time during 2019, both Neo-Nazis appeared made their stint in the local AfD – a rather common move. Today, the AfD is classified as an explicitly right-wing extremists political party in Saxony.
A video that the AfD Kreisverband Landkreis Leipzig published in November of that year shows how the two AfD-Neo-Nazis attended a party event at the Volkstrauertrag in Bad Lausick.
Both Neo-Nazis played music. With trumpet, flugelhorn and slide caps, both Neo-Nazis were standing in front of the ensemble. They presented the militaristic song, “Vom Guten Kameraden” – the good soldier/comrade.
Yet, the Neo-Nazis kept up the appearance of a petti-bourgeois façade. To improve their Neo-Nazi camouflaging skills, Kurt Hättasch and his wife attend a “seminar” of the far-right, highly demagogic, and euphemistically labeled “Institute for State Policy” in 2022. It is the foremost Neo-Nazi think tank in Germany.
Hättasch also had a rather personal family connection to the far-right. His wife is the daughter of Thomas Sattelberg who was a local squad-leader of a brutal – and later banned – skinheads outfit called Skinheads Sächsische Schweiz (“SSS”).
The SSS is a violent Neo-Nazi brotherhood. In 2019, Sattelberg and his daughter even traveled to Ukraine to network with far-right Azov members.
In the spring of 2022, AfD-Neo-Nazi Hättasch and his wife showed up again at the Institute for State Policy for more far right ideological training sessions.
The “institute” is run by the far right demagogue Götz Kubitschek in East-Germany’s Schnellroda – now also classified as right-wing extremist.
In May of the same year, Hättasch and four others arrested – Hans-Georg Pförtsch, Karl K., Jörg and Jörn S. – were photographed with the AfD’s true Führer: Höcke.
The photo also featured banner of the AfD’s “Young Alternative” (JA). It was taken in the middle of Grimma’s main market square in Grimma, where the Thuringian AfD-Führer Björn Höcke was holding a rally.
Neo-Nazi Hättasch had set up a propaganda booth for the JA. Hättasch was well prepared. Already his father had organized paramilitary far right training sessions.
Around the time of his AfD activities, Hättasch joined the Neo-Nazi “separatists”. It was August 2022.
However, the Saxony Separatists were founded almost two years earlier by Jörg S. who came from Brandis – a small remote town about 20 km from Grimma.
He and his brother – Jörn S. who was also arrested – have a significant far right family background.
Their grandfather was a member of Austria’s FPÖ and their father is a right-wing extremist who has been convicted several times.
Their grandfather was a soldier in Austria’s army for seven years and was also active in militant Neo-Nazi groups in Austria during the 1980s.
He later organized paramilitary training camps and dozens of military-style war-game exercises for Neo-Nazis. During those, they practiced killing people with their bare hands.
In the 1990s, he moved to East-Germany’s Saxony – a hotspot for Neo-Nazis. Once in Saxony, he worked in various construction companies.
Most recently, he has been active in a far right, xenophobic hate group called Legida. It runs far right marches in Leipzig.
Hättasch’s Neo-Nazi platoon has organized itself via the messenger service Telegram. Through that, they organize and conducted Neo-Nazi “training” sessions – for example, at an abandoned airfield near a local town called Brandis.
Similar to their Neo-Nazi father, the Neo-Nazi brothers and their comrades practiced house-to-house fighting and conducted prolonged night marches.
The group has also travelled to training sessions for shoot exercises to the Czech Republic and Poland. Today, Neo-Nazis operate EU wide networks.
Back home in Grimma and right next to the local train station, the Neo-Nazi outfit turned a three-floor house into a far-right meeting place. Innocently, the ground floor is used as a snack bar.
At that location too, the police arrived on that cold Tuesday morning to arrest the AfD-Neo-Nazis.
Overall, there have been far right and Neo-Nazi groups in the East-German state of Saxony for years. From them, right-wing terrorism emanated. Worse, the recent arrests only show the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
Rather typically for East-German authorities – that once protected Germany’s most evil Neo-Nazi killer squad, the NSU – the first clue to the AfD-Neo-Nazi terrorist plans came from the US secret service FBI.
The FBI discovered an English-language chat account with far radical statements.
German security authorities then managed to identify the user: SS Neo-Nazi Jörg S. Alerted by the FBI, German investigators observed the Neo-Nazi group rather meticulously.
Soon, the Neo-Nazis’ talk became more serious. The Neo-Nazis spoke about getting weapons. The time had come for Germany’s federal prosecutors to strike – eventually.
Several of those arrested “should have” been noticed by the German security authorities – but weren’t. Neo-Nazi Hans-Georg Pförtsch, for example, has been appearing at various far-right events since 2015. That is ten years ago.
Pförtsch also had international contacts. One photo shows him with three members of the Swedish “Nordic Resistance Movement”. The US State Department has classified them as a terrorist group.
Pförtsch was carrying a flag signifying a hyper-violent Neo-Nazi outfit called “Knockout 51”. It was during May 2018 in the East-German city of Erfurt where a march of the Neo-Nazi NPD party took place.
Pförtsch is there to carry a flag of the Neo-Nazi outfit “Nationaler Aufbau Eisenach” – Nationalistic Re-Awakening Eisenach. It was the predecessor organization of the even more violent Knockout 51.
Of course, in East-Germany nobody suspected them to be Neo-Nazis.
By the end of June 2024, four Neo-Nazis had been sentenced to prison for membership in a criminal Neo-Nazi association. They had trained martial arts (read: street fighting tactics) with Knockout 51 while planning to kill political opponents. This is what the euphemism “martial arts” means.
In September 2014, Germany’s federal prosecutor sued three more members of Knockout 51 (KO51). KO51 is also linked to a Neo-Nazi terrorist USA-outfit called Atomwaffen Division.
In East-Germany – naturally – nobody could have possibly known about this earlier.
Two days after the anti-Neo-Nazi police raids, everyday life returns to Grimma. Near Neo-Nazi Hättasch’s house – where his wife and toddler live – a tractor rolls over the field. Revealingly, neighbors do not even want to talk anything about the arrests.
One local decries their Neo-Nazis with the words, “eight men want to tear down the world … in the past, the Jews were persecuted, today it is the AfD.“
Belittling Neo-Nazism spiced up with anti-Semitism appears to be a common theme of East-Germany’s AfD-Neo-Nazi supporters. This is East-Germany in 2025.
With rampant AfD-Nazi links, AfD propaganda likes to insinuate that the AfD are the victims. This is a phenomenon known as the victim perpetrator inversion.
Meanwhile, the real perpetrators – Saxony’s SS or Saxonian Separatists – are not alone. There have been plenty of such Neo-Nazi groups in Saxony.
Worse, they have been operative for years. Even worse, German Neo-Nazis feel attracted by the right-wing terror. German Neo-Nazis tend to flog to East-Germany.
Arrests like these are only to show the tip of the iceberg. Still worse, Germany’s most abhorrent killer squad, the NSU, lived – unmolested – in the “underground” in Saxony.
Some members of the Neo-Nazi NSU-network had rather ordinary jobs. Others operated in broad daylight. And nobody suspected anything in East-Germany.
Neither the Grimma SS nor the NSU are isolated organizations. Instead, East-Germany is covered with wide-reaching networks of Neo-Nazis.
There are right-wing terrorist groups such as Sturm 34, the Freital group, Revolution Chemnitz, in the area around Grimma, the Terror Crew Muldental is operating.
Meanwhile, many Saxons are not bothered by Neo-Nazism – on the contrary. Others even encourage Neo-Nazis.
However, what distinguishes the newly arrested people from previous Neo-Nazis is that the “separatists” are young and – in some cases – have been part of an educated petti-bourgeois.
What also assists East-German Neo-Nazis is the rise of the AfD – a political party sitting at roughly 1/3 of voter support in East-Germany where the AfD-Neo-Nazi collaboration is working well.
A second factor are Germany’s Burschenschaft – far right student fraternities. Whatever their background, many Neo-Nazis can look back on a considerable far right career.
For years, they have been appearing at marches of Neo-Nazi parties like the AfD, the NPD, and the even more extreme III. Way.
Being a longstanding member of Grimma’s SS-Neo-Nazis, Jörn S. had been driving to Budapest in February 2024 for their annual day of a Neo-Nazi Day of Honor. It is a well-established Europe-wide network meeting of Neo-Nazis.
Back home, AfD-Nazi-SS man Hättasch had sat on the Grimma City Council. And so did his Neo-Nazi off-sider Kevin Richter who was a deputy on the city’s social committee with responsibilities for culture, youth, and sports. A perfect position for an AfD-Neo-Nazi.
As for AfD-Neo-Nazi Hättasch, it seemed as if the AfD wanted to build the young Neo-Nazi up for higher things.
Not uncommon is that fact that Hättasch has been an employee of an AfD-member of the state’s parliament. It was Saxony’s AfD-man Alexander Wiesner providing yet another AfD-Neo-Nazi-terrorism link.
Undeterred, AfD-Neo-Nazis Hättasch and Richter celebrated solstice in June 2024 in rural East-German Strahwalde singing songs of the Hitler Youth and honoring their SS-Standartenführer – a mid-ranking Nazi position under Hitler.
To honor all of that, the AfD nominated Neo-Nazi Hättasch, a little later, to be elected as deputy mayor of Grimma. Surprisingly, he was not elected – even East-German Neo-Nazis can fail.
Meanwhile, the Neo-Nazi AfD pretends to be just an ordinary political party – with proven Neo-Nazi links. According to a recent polling, over 20% of Germans support the Neo-Nazi AfD. Germany’s next election is scheduled for the 23rd of February.
Photo: (source: https://www.img2go.com/ai-creator-studio)
Born on the foothills of Germany’s Castle Frankenstein, Thomas Klikauer is the author of over 1,000 publications including a book on Alternative für Deutschland: The AfD – published by Liverpool University Press.
Subscribe to Cross-border Talks’ YouTube channel! Follow the project’s Facebook and Twitter page! And here are the podcast’s Telegram channel and its Substack newsletter!
Like our work? Donate to Cross-Border Talks or buy us a coffee!
About The Author
