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| 1. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Pond, Viersen [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf A twenty-two-year-old man told the police in Viersen that on 10 July 2006 he had been verbally abused and physically assaulted by four young men on account of his skin colour. He said that he had succeeded in defending himself and getting away. The state security department of the Mönchengladbach police took charge of the investigation but was unable to identify any of the perpetrators. |
| 2. |  | Eva Leitolf 2006 Tram stop, Potsdam [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf In the early hours of Easter Sunday 2006 a black German man in Potsdam was injured so seriously with a broken skull that doctors had to put him into an artificial coma for several weeks. The initial investigations gave reason to suspect a racist background to the attack. Shortly beforehand the victim had called his wife, whose voicemail had recorded the words 'dirty nigger'. The Federal Public Prosecutor took charge of the investigation on the grounds that the racist motive could potentially 'affect the internal security of the country'. One of the two suspects arrested was charged with grievous bodily harm, the other with failure to lend assistance. Police discovered rightwing extremist music in the car used by the suspects. Both the accused denied being at the scene of the attack at the time, and two experts failed to identify the recorded voice beyond reasonable doubt as the voice of the accused. Because the charges were largely based on this recording, the suspects were released from remand on 23 May. Three days later the Federal Public Prosecutor also passed responsibility for the investigation back to the Potsdam state prosecutor, because the racist statements made by the suspects were not directly connected with the crime. The victim, who was joint plaintiff in the case, joined the other parties in calling for an acquittal, but continued to maintain his conviction that this had been a racist crime. The accused were found not guilty. |
| 3. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Roundabout, Oschersleben [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 5 August 2006 the owner of a Vietnamese take-away was forced to stop his van by four young men who threatened him with death and an attack on his take-away. The attackers damaged the van with bottles and by kicking it. After failing to escape from the roundabout he hit the accelerator, striking and slightly injuring one of the attackers. The Vietnamese man went straight to the police and reported the incident. An investigation was opened against the men, who were under the influence of alcohol, on charges of threat, intimidation and criminal damage. Two adults were given fines of 600 and 400 Euro. One of them appealed against the sentence. One juvenile was cautioned and ordered to pay compensation of 250 Euro to the victim. |
| 4. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Hirschgarten, Munich [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 10 August 2000 the Green group on Munich city council organised a minibus tour of the city's 'centres of right-wing extremist activity' for the press. The itinerary included the headquarters of a rightwing student fraternity, the offices of a right-wing intellectual magazine and the home of the leader of the DVU party. According to the press release, right-wing extremist structures in eastern Germany had been built and funded from Munich and Upper Bavaria. Hirschgarten was identified as a meeting place for right-wing extremists where many violent attacks had occurred. |
| 5. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Marktplatz, Wriezen [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 2 June 2004 a mentally disabled fifteen-year-old of Arab extraction suffered verbal racist abuse from a group of youths on the Market Square in Wriezen. A girl cut his neck with a sharp object, causing a wound several centimetres long. The victim managed to get away and was taken to hospital in this life-threatening condition. An hour after the attack the police arrested a fifteen-year-old girl. The suspect was already known to the police for various offences of bodily harm and displaying symbols of banned organisations. The girl received a two-year suspended sentence, while two other youths were each sentenced to one year, also suspended. Two further youths were cautioned for failure to lend assistance, another given four weeks detention, and one adult was fined. |
| 6. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 River Spree, Berlin Friedrichshain [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf During the night of 25-26 July 1994 a Polish building worker drowned in the River Spree in Berlin. After an argument with a group of young Germans, the forty-five-year-old man and his thirty-six-year-old countryman had been pushed into the water and prevented from swimming to the bank. It was claimed that the events had been triggered by the two Poles pestering two young women. A policeman reported having heard shouts of 'Poles piss off' and 'Don't let the Pole out [of the water]'. The court found no xenophobic motive, saying that the shouts may merely have referred factually to the nationality of the victims. In May 1995 four men aged between nineteen and twenty-five, and two girls aged sixteen and seventeen were found guilty of bodily harm followed by death and given custodial sentences (in some cases suspended) of up to four years. |
| 7. |  | Eva Leitolf 2006 Disused Concrete Works, Rathenow [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf Following an attack on an asylum-seeker on 22 May 2006 in the grounds of a disused concrete works the victim support group Opferperspektive, the anti-fascist group Antifa Westhavelland and asylum-seekers together organised a World Cup party on 30 June, with public viewing of the day's football matches on TV. According to their press release, they wanted to take a stand against the idea of there being 'no-go areas' for foreigners. |
| 8. |  | Eva Leitolf 2006 Schöna, Sõchsische Schweiz [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf In the Saxony state elections in 2004 the fascist National Democratic Party gained 23.1 percent of the vote in Reinhardtsdorf-Schöna. According to press reports it maintains close contact with the banned SSS group (Sõchsische Schweiz Skinheads), which has set itself the goal of ridding the area of foreigners. |
| 9. |  | Eva Leitolf 2006 Refugee hostel, near Bahnsdorf [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf The private-sector company European Homecare runs hostels for asylum-seekers for local councils across Germany, including one near Bahnsdorf. In a press release for a day of action against the Bahnsdorf hostel on 2 April 2005, the organisation Nolager criticised conditions at the former Russian army base: Groups of three or four people had to share fourteen-square-metre containers in the forest without legal, psychological or social services. The Aliens Office in Senftenberg had 'restrictively' refused any permission to leave the camp since the beginning of 2005 and furthermore, according to the press release, the asylum-seekers had been asked to sign a statement that they would not press any claims if they came to harm through landmines and other objects abandoned in the woods by the military. The day of action in Bahnsdorf was part of a campaign against refugee detention facilities organised by Nolager, which toured northern and eastern Germany in summer 2004. According to a report in the local newspaper, the local official responsible for health and social affairs rejected the accusations, saying that it was simply impossible that asylum-seekers were living in such cramped conditions because their number had fallen from about one thousand to just over four hundred, and in fact the hostel was under-occupied. She went on to say that the asylum-seekers were treated not restrictively but according to the law, and that most of them were 'satisfied'. |
| 10. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 British war cemetery, Kleve-Reichswalde [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 11 November 2001 a car with Dutch number plates was set alight on the car park opposite the main entrance to the war cemetery. The Dutch owner told the police that he had been playing the bagpipes in the cemetery when a man in a black bomber jacket and army boots aggressively demanded that he play something for a 'Rudolf Heinrich' whose birthday he said had been the week before. The Dutch man refused, and when he returned to his car a short while later he found it in flames. The state security police took charge of the investigation because the possibility of it being a political crime committed by rightwing extremists could not be excluded. They remained inconclusive. |
| 11. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Beach, Heringsdorf [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf In the night of 29-30 July 2004 a group of local men and women assaulted a group of teenagers from Berlin who were listening to music on the beach. One of the victims had to spend five days in a Berlin hospital being treated for bruising to the ribs and back, concussion and craniocerebral trauma. According to a report in the local newspaper, the victim's lawyer criticised that it had taken more than a year for the results of the investigation to be passed to the state prosecutor, and that charges had not been brought until 4 April 2006. This case, he said, gave 'encouragement to Nazi thugs' because it gave them the impression that they 'could get away with it'. At the trial witnesses reported that a dark skinned girl belonging to the group from Berlin had been called a 'negro slut' during the attack, and victim support groups said it was a racist attack. The court found no evidence that the perpetrators had a right-wing political background and decided that the loud music the victims had been listening to had been the motive for the crime. On 30 November 2006 a juvenile court found two of the perpetrators guilty of grievous bodily harm. One was sentenced to one hundred hours of community service, the other ordered to pay compensation of 1,700 Euro to the main victim. |
| 12. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Bieblach-Ost, Gera [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 29 January 2004 in Thuringia, four young Germans killed a twenty-seven year- old ethnic German immigrant from Russia. The attackers, aged between fourteen and nineteen, punched, kicked and stabbed their victim, and hit him on the head with a hammer. Left-wing groups said it was a racist attack and called a demonstration. The four perpetrators were given youth custody sentences of between three and a half and ten years. The court was not able to find conclusive evidence of a racist motive. The verdict refers to the perpetrators being angered because the victim had urinated on the sofa, kicked the cat several times and thrown a pet rat against the wall. |
| 13. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Kantor-Bischoff-Platz, Bad Frankenhausen [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf After a concert in a church on 27 September 2001, an intoxicated twenty-year-old man threatened the members of an American gospel choir with a bayonet and called them 'nigger pigs'. The sexton was also threatened after he attempted to intervene. A police spokeswoman confirmed that during questioning the suspect had openly acknowledged having extreme right-wing leanings. The perpetrator was found guilty of fourteen different offences and sentenced in March 2002 to three years and two months youth custody with compulsory addiction treatment (another previous verdict was also taken into account in sentencing). |
| 14. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 State road, Weihenlinden [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 16 May 1999 there was a serious road accident on state road 2078, where all five Turkish occupants of the car were killed. Two days later a driver discovered a poster at the scene of the accident bearing a swastika and the words 'the moral of the story - dead Turks don't bother us'. The poster was secured by the police and examined forensically, but the investigation remained inconclusive. |
| 15. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 By the village pond, Pömmelte [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf The son of an Ethiopian man and a German woman who lived in a children's home in Pömmelte was verbally abused in a bus by five juveniles on 9 January 2006. When the twelve-year-old got off the bus in Pömmelte, the group followed him several hundred metres through the village before maltreating him for more than an hour at the village pond. He was spat upon, beaten and kicked with army boots. The perpetrators forced him to lick their boots and trainers and to answer questions with 'Yes, my Fuhrer'. The ringleader threatened him with a gas pistol and throttled him, while another urinated on his head. He was subjected to a tirade of verbal abuse. The boy suffered thirty-four injuries, including craniocerebral trauma and a broken nose, and had to spend a week in hospital. The court found that the sixteen- to twenty-year-olds had sadistically tormented and gravely injured their victim for racist reasons, and sentenced the ringleader to three and a half years youth custody. Three other accused were given suspended sentences. In response to the crime the anti-fascist alliance in Schönebeck and Magdeburg called a demonstration in Schönebeck on 25 February 2006 under the slogan 'Don't look the other way, intervene!' At the same time the Young National Democrats and other local right-wing groups organised a counter-demonstration entitled 'Stop the media hate campaigns! They talk about Nazis but they mean all us Germans!' |
| 16. |  | Eva Leitolf 2006 Lake Schwerin, near Berlin [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf A group of French and Italian teenagers - black and white - camping by the lake near Berlin were attacked on 1 August 2006 by a German youth throwing bottles. The attacker gave the Hitler salute and went on with two friends to Gross Köris, where he smashed a window of an Asian take-away. Following police investigations, the three suspects were charged with criminal damage, displaying banned symbols and attempted grievous bodily harm, as well as a robbery committed later. One of the perpetrators was sentenced to two years youth custody (suspended), another to one year and six months youth custody (suspended), while the third was cautioned. |
| 17. |  | Eva Leitolf 2008 Danziger Platz, Ludwigshafen [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 3 February 2008 four adults and five children died in a fire in a tenement house largely populated by Turkish people in the centre of Ludwigshafen. More than sixty people were injured. Even before the fire investigators had begun their work, several Turkish newspapers were writing of a 'second Solingen' (referring to a racist arson attack in 1993) and reporting alleged right-wing extremist threats against the house's Turkish owner. Additionally, they wrote, an anti-Turkish slogan had been painted on the wall close to the scene of the fire. Turkey sent its own experts to work together with the German authorities, while the Council of Citizens of Turkish Extraction in Germany warned against jumping to conclusions. Just one day after the fire the state premier of Rhineland-Palatinate categorically excluded the possibility of arson. According to Ludwigshafen city council there had been a skinhead meeting place on the ground floor more than ten years ago, but those premises been a completely normal pub directly before the building was sold to the Turkish family. Whether threats had been made against the present owner still had to be verified, a council spokesperson said. In summer 2006 two fire-bombs were thrown into the building, which at that time housed a Turkish cultural centre. No damage was caused and the perpetrators were not caught. Concerning the fire in 2008, at a press conference on 4 March the state prosecution service said that it was working on the theory that the fire had been caused by negligence, through a slow smouldering fire under the cellar stairs, and that there was no evidence for a racist attack. |
| 18. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Grounds of Marquardt Palace, Marquardt [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 2 July 2007 a group of abusive shaven-headed youths intruded into the wedding party of a couple from Berlin being held at Marquardt Palace north of Potsdam, and assaulted the bridegroom and guests. After the wedding guests fled into the palace building, the group tore down the marquees and demolished the furniture. The palace caretaker, who lives in the area, told a newspaper that racism could have been a reason for the attack, because 'Turkish music' had been played at the wedding party, which had led to a rumour spreading round the village that 'a Turkish wedding' was taking place. Some of the local right-wing extremists, she said, had gone to the palace from a village fete taking place at the same time. The press office of the Potsdam police spoke on 7 July of a total of twelve suspects. These were citizens of Potsdam aged between twenty and thirty-five, including three women. According to the police press release the witness interviews already conducted by that time and other information gathered about the suspects gave no grounds to suspect a political motive for the crimes. The Potsdam state prosecutor instructed the police to continue the investigation on charges of bodily harm and criminal damage. |
| 19. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Julianenbrunnen, Guntersblum [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 14 November 2007 the state prosecutor in Mainz charged five men from Rheinhessen aged between seventeen and twenty-nine with two cases of jointly committed grievous bodily harm. In the early morning of 19 August 2007 at the Kellerweg festival one of the suspects is said to have shouted things like 'let's get that Negro' before assaulting a Sudanese man and breaking a wine bottle over his head. Then the man was kicked while lying on the ground. A German of Egyptian extraction who hurried to help his friend was attacked with the broken neck of the bottle and one of his fingers was severed. |
| 20. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Municipal Park, Dessau [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf A Mozambican man who had come to East Germany in 1980 as a migrant worker was assaulted during the night of 10-11 June 2000 by three drunk men aged sixteen, seventeen and twenty-five. After being kicked on the ground, the victim was dragged naked through the park and his clothes were hung in the branches of nearby trees. He died three days later in hospital. During the trial it transpired that just four days before the incident the same perpetrators had assaulted another black man. All three had extreme right-wing affiliations and said that the crime had been motivated by 'hate of foreigners'. The oldest was sentenced to life imprisonment, while the others each received nine years youth custody. The memorial set up at the scene of the crime has been repeatedly desecrated. |
| 21. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Herrenteich, Suhl [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 30 June 2004 in Suhl an argument between local youths and a group of migrants escalated. The youths shouted racist slogans and pushed a thirty-two-year-old Nigerian man into Herrenteich pond. Two uninvolved passers-by who attempted to intervene were attacked with a knife by one of the youths. The police filed complaints against both the attackers and the Nigerian, but charges against the latter were later dropped. Almost one year later the twenty-threeyear- old German was found guilty of grievous bodily harm and given a suspended sentence of ten months. |
| 22. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Car park, Helmstedt [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 22 August 2007 a German man of Turkish extraction was pressed against the fence of a shopping centre car park by another man, who racially insulted him and threatened him with death. The attacker also said that the victim's flat would be stormed and mentioned the number '88', which is used by right-wing extremists as a code for 'Heil Hitler' ('H' being the eighth letter of the alphabet). A court order imposing punishment was issued, against which the accused appealed. A court case is pending in Helmstedt. |
| 23. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Discotheque, Braunschweig [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf According to witnesses' statements, on 18 February 2007 a black man was verbally abused and physically assaulted because of his skin colour outside a discotheque. The victim was first subjected to racist and other verbal abuse, before being head-butted and kicked repeatedly. The perpetrators were able to escape unidentified. Despite extensive investigations it proved impossible to identify any of the attackers. |
| 24. |  | Eva Leitolf 2007 Althaldensleben - 'Olln' [German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008] C-print 66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet) Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf On 12 December 2006 six posters bearing the messages 'All nonwhites to keep out!' and 'Keep Olln clean!' were found posted in the district Althaldensleben. An investigation was initiated against persons unknown on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred and the results were passed to the Magdeburg state prosecutor at the beginning of 2007. |