Germany Bans 2 Neo-Nazi Groups : Europe: Police raid offices, seize materials. Move is likely to renew debate over effectiveness of outlawing organizations.

Germany’s constitutional court outlawed two neo-Nazi groups, enabling police to raid more than 50 far-right extremists’ homes and offices Friday in a nationwide sweep.

Banned were the small but highly visible Free German Workers Party and the tiny but influential National List, both of which had been under investigation for more than a year.

The police sweeps of the National List were limited to the city-state of Hamburg, but those of the Free German Workers were carried out in 10 of Germany’s 16 states.

In the raids, police seized membership files, computer disks, radio phones, documents and other equipment in an attempt to destroy the groups’ infrastructure and to keep them from reorganizing. No arrests were initially made.

Also seized in the raids were weapons--including six carbines with bayonets--photographs of members giving the Nazi stiff-arm salute, flags and copies of Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf,” which is banned in Germany.

The crackdown brought sighs of relief from German officials, who have been embarrassed by a wave of extremist activity and anti-foreigner violence that swelled in the wake of the 1990 unification of the former East and West Germanys.

At least 30 people, many of them foreigners, have died at the hands of right-wing extremists in Germany in the last five years.

“The right-radical scene has been dealt a blow at a vital point,” said Gerhard Boekel, interior minister for the state of Hessen.

Still, the crackdown is bound to add fuel to a longstanding debate in Germany about whether banning far-right groups and seizing their property really curtails their activity, or whether the raids drive the organizations underground--making them harder to keep track of and therefore more dangerous.

“We have evidence that (underground) networks are being established in northern and southern Germany,” said Peter Frisch, vice president of the Federal Office for Constitutional Protection, which monitors far-right and far-left activity in Germany. “That will increase.”

Frisch said the bans were, nevertheless, advisable because they discourage young people with mild right-wing tendencies from joining.

“Sympathizers will fall away,” he predicted.

The Free German Workers Party was founded in 1979 and is believed to have about 450 members, although it claims the support of several thousand more.

It has announced plans for a putsch against Germany’s democratic government and the execution thereafter of its political enemies.

“It is the goal of the party to get control of all power in Germany,” Chairman Friedhelm Busse of Munich was quoted as telling members at a party convention in 1993.

The National List is believed to have 30 members.

But Christian Worch, its leader, has been one of Germany’s most instrumental neo-Nazis, credited with the development of a sophisticated, nationwide neo-Nazi network. Worch was convicted of illegal neo-Nazi activity last November and sentenced to two years in prison.

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Manfred Kanther, Germany’s interior minister, began seeking a ban on the Free German Workers and the National List in August, 1993, after they staged a provocative “Rudolf Hess Memorial March” in the city of Fulda, near Germany’s financial center, Frankfurt-Main.

About 500 right-wing radicals massed on Fulda’s market square, then crossed over police cordons and moved out into the town streets, shouting Nazi-style slogans and taunting foreigners to “come on, we’re going to get you!”

It is illegal in Germany to shout slogans that are “hostile to the constitution,” a legal catchall phrase that can include calls for the return of National Socialist ideals.

Many Germans were upset that the Fulda police stood by and let the neo-Nazis rally, since they believed that the anti-foreigner battle cries were illegal.

The Fulda events led to heated debate in Germany over what political activity the police should allow and when they should step in.

It was during this debate that Kanther said he wanted to ban the Free German Workers Party.

The German government had already banned nine far-right organizations since 1992. But Kanther could not move against the Free Workers because they called themselves a political party--and political parties are protected under German law.

But political parties are also required by law to show that they “have sufficient seriousness” in their efforts to “influence the political climate in the Bundestag.”

In Friday’s ruling, the constitutional court found that the Free Workers did not meet these criteria and therefore were not protected as a legitimate political party.