Günter Deckert
| Günter Deckert | |
|---|---|
| Leader of the National Democratic Party of Germany | |
|
In office 1991–1996 |
|
| Preceded by | Martin Mussgnug |
| Succeeded by | Udo Voigt |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
9 January 1940 Heidelberg, Baden |
| Political party | National Democratic Party of Germany |
| Profession | Politician |
Günter Deckert (born 9 January 1940 in Heidelberg, Baden) is a far-right German political activist. He was the leader of the far right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). He has served five years in prison in Germany for various offences, including Holocaust denial and incitement to racial hatred. He translated the Leuchter report, an investigation from the United States which attempted to cast doubt on the feasibility of mass extermination via the gas chambers in the Holocaust.
Deckert was a high school teacher, but was fired from that job in 1988 after being repeatedly sanctioned for his political activism. He was also a city councilman in Weinheim and started a travel agency named Germania. He rose to fame when he became the chairman of the NPD.
In November 1991, Deckert participated in a meeting featuring Fred A. Leuchter, for which he was later charged and convicted of inciting racial hatred. Deckert translated what Leuchter was saying for the benefit of the audience, and said at the meeting that the Holocaust was a myth perpetrated by "a parasitical people who were using a historical lie to muzzle […] Germany". In 1992 he was sentenced to one year in prison. Deckert appealed the verdict of his conviction, and in March 1994 the Mannheim State Court ordered a retrial, on the grounds that the lower court had failed to ascertain all of the necessary facts.
At the retrial in the summer of 1994, one of the three panel judges, Judge Wolfgang Mueller, described him as an "intelligent man of character for whom the claim was a matter of the heart" and another, Judge Ranier Orlet, who had presided over the case and whose prior reputation for "revision-proof" opinions had made him seem ideal for the case, declared that Deckert had "expressed legitimate interests" when he had questioned the political and financial demands continuing to be made by Jews upon Germany almost fifty years after World War II, "while the mass murders of other nations remain unatoned". Orlet, in a sixty-six page opinion, found that Deckert was "no anti-Semite" who "left a good impression upon the court" as a "responsible personality of good character", and who merely considered it "desirable that research constantly rechecked even historical theses that are considered valid". The panel of three judges still found Deckert guilty, and sentenced him again to one year in prison, but this time as a suspended sentence, in the expectation (in the judges' opinion) that he would "avoid punishable involvements" in future, albeit that "changes in his political views … were not to be expected".
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