Right-wing extremism in Lippoldsberg: bookseller convicted of Nazi propaganda

Nazi propaganda of the worst kind was delivered to the bookseller in packages, over and over again, sometimes several times a week. Dozens of reprinted writings by leading National Socialists, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler and Alfred Rosenberg, arrived at Margret Nickel in Lippoldsberg in northern Hesse. Plus books denying the Shoah and lots of other deeply anti-Semitic pamphlets. On Tuesday, the 82-year-old was sentenced to a 20-month suspended sentence for incitement to hatred and using banned Nazi symbols.

The defendant asserted in the hearing before the Kassel district court that she had not ordered anything that the neo-Nazi publisher “Der Schelm” had sent to her house. Nothing paid. And not resold either. "Who should I send it to if I haven't advertised it? To the good Lord?" Nickel asked. “Is there any proof that I did this?” She claimed that she received the deliveries without asking, throughout 2020. And she would have sent them back. But unfortunately there was no return address on the packages.

While the right-wing extremist lawyer activist Björn Clemens pleaded for acquittal as a defense attorney, the court followed the prosecution and found that for a conviction it was sufficient that the bookseller had kept the inflammatory writings in stock. However, it took away from the defendant that she did not want to have anything to do with the content of the work: “We believe that you do not have this attitude,” said the chairwoman of the jury court – causing incredulous laughter in the audience.

Because what Margret Nickel otherwise sells isn't all that different. In Lippoldsberg near Kassel, the sprightly pensioner manages the legacy of the Nazi mastermind Hans Grimm (“People without Space”). Grimm (1875-1959) lived in the small village on the Weser and founded the Klosterhaus publishing house with an attached bookstore in 1951, which Nickel still runs today. On offer is just about everything that can be found ideologically on the right-wing fringe. At least things that are criminally relevant are not sold openly over the counter.

The defendant, who according to the court is not suspected of having brown views, has also been involved in the board of the right-wing extremist Society for Free Journalism (GfP) for years. Founded in 1960 by former NSDAP and SS members, the association sees itself as a non-partisan rallying point for the right-wing Kulturkampf. To this day, the relativization of Nazi crimes and the fight against the sedition law, which criminalizes denial of the Shoah, plays a central role. Nickel's bookstore serves as the GfP's secretariat.

And Nickel also had to deal with the publishing house “Der Schelm” before the allegedly unwanted deliveries: until the end of 2019, she took over the delivery of books for the neo-Nazi Adrian Preißinger, who founded the publishing house in Leipzig in 2014. The now 62-year-old had fled abroad after an investigation was initiated against the “rogue” and needed conspiratorial sales structures. Because of her involvement, Nickel had already been sentenced to a 15-month suspended sentence by the Leipzig district court in 2024, which has now been included in the Kassel judgment. In the same year, the Dresden Higher Regional Court convicted three other “rogue” participants and classified their actions as membership in a criminal organization.

Preißinger himself is suspected by the authorities in Moscow. From there he continues to trade uninhibitedly in reprints of Nazi propaganda, including Hitler's "Mein Kampf", in Hitler busts and pictures, in writings by Shoah deniers and other ardent anti-Semites - apparently with the help of a network of helpers in Germany.

The Karlsruhe public prosecutor's office is investigating eight defendants on suspicion of communal incitement in at least 488 cases. In March, apartments and business premises were searched in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony as well as in Spain and Poland. As a spokesman for the prosecution announced, the “extensive evaluation of the seized electronic data carriers” is currently underway.