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Investigators on Monday at the crime scene: "The danger is high that the spiral of violence will continue"
Photo: Michael Reichel / dpa
The NPD met here, the operator is a well-known neo-Nazi, the bar has been a meeting place for the right-wing extremist scene for years: The »Bulls's Eye« is known far beyond Eisenach, now it has become the target of a suspected left-wing extremist attack - and is the focus a debate on politically motivated violence.
The act itself is well documented: A video circulating online shows how several masked people smear the words “Fight Nazis every day” on the facade, break a window and a little later set off an explosive device that they had apparently built themselves.
It is an "object that has repeatedly deserved to be attacked, just like any other retreat from Nazis," says a presumed letter of confession.
Everything about this case indicates that those responsible come from the left-wing extremist scene.
According to the police, who consider the crime video to be authentic, no one was injured in the attack on Monday morning at 4.45 a.m., according to which, apart from the facade and furnishings, a car was damaged in front of the house.
So the consequences are manageable, but the excitement is still great - which is probably also due to the fact that there is a history.
Assault with batons, hammer and bars
There was already a violent attack on the »Bull's Eye« in October 2019, at that time not only window panes and parts of the inventory were broken: According to the police, the owner of the restaurant and several guests were hit by at least ten people with batons, irritants and fist blows. they suffered serious injuries.
According to the investigators, a group around an alleged left-wing extremist was behind the attack.
According to this, Lina E. from Leipzig had the »Bull's Eye« in her sights several times: In December 2019 she wanted to attack the restaurant operator, a well-known right-wing extremist and former NPD city council candidate, with two hammers in an attack.
However, the employee of a security service discovered them in good time and thwarted the act.
"A new level of escalation"
Supported by others, Lina E. implemented her plan a little later: The group is said to have observed the restaurant, followed the man into his residential area and attacked him there with irritants, batons, a hammer, rods and a wheel wrench.
According to investigators, when they became aware of their victim's companions, they also brutally attacked them.
In November, the federal prosecutor's office arrested Lina E., the 25-year-old is accused of, among other things, collective dangerous bodily harm, particularly serious breach of the peace and membership in a criminal organization.
She is in custody.
It is unclear whether all of this is directly related to the latest attack on the "Bull's Eye".
The authors of the alleged letter of confession, published on the Indymedia platform, describe themselves as a group of anti-fascist women.
According to an MDR report, the State Criminal Police Office is investigating in cooperation with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
In the meantime, the case is also occupying leading state politicians, the Thuringian CDU parliamentary group wants to make the matter an issue in the parliament's interior committee.
"The bomb attack in Eisenach represents a new level of escalation," said the CDU parliamentary spokesman for domestic affairs, Raymond Walk.
“Human lives in an apartment building were actually endangered - at least the perpetrators accepted that.” There are “signs of left-wing terrorism,” said Walk, and: “There is a great danger that the spiral of violence will continue and counter-reactions will ensue will."
Interior Minister Georg Maier was also dismayed.
"The accumulation of politically motivated crime in Eisenach fills me with concern," wrote the SPD politician on Twitter.
"The rule of law will consistently take all means against any form of extremism."
The domestic policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group Dirk Bergner was concerned about the political culture.
"Even if other views and political positions seem completely unbearable, that does not justify violence." The state monopoly on the use of force must remain.
Eisenach has long been considered a stronghold of the right-wing extremist scene, and the NPD in particular has many supporters in the university town: in 2019, the right-wing extremists received more than ten percent of the votes in the local elections, with the neo-Nazi Patrick Wieschke, who has multiple criminal records, alone, with 4,600 votes.
The importance of the »Bull's Eye« for the scene has declined in recent years: According to the state interior ministry, the NPD's May Festival took place in the building in 2014, since the opening of the »Flieder-Volkshaus« as an NPD state branch in the same year However, this has developed into the central meeting point for right-wing extremists from the region.
Eisenach's mayor Katja Wolf, who has been fighting a bitter legal dispute with the NPD for years, was shocked by the attack on the »Bull's Eye«.
You condemn the attack in the strongest possible terms, said the left-wing politician according to the "Thüringer Allgemeine": "I fundamentally condemn any form of violence, it must never be a means of any dispute."
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