Greed, Not Racism, Apparently Provoked German Firebombing

Three and a half years ago, this agreeably situated village of 243, tucked beneath pine forests southeast of Berlin, was held up to the world as a symbol of Germany at its xenophobic worst.

In August 1993, Dolgenbrodt’s residents were reported to have paid neo-Nazis to firebomb a local youth hostel, just in time to keep the state government of Brandenburg from settling a group of African asylum-seekers there.

At the time, Germany was already reeling from a spate of racist violence against foreigners and the resultant international criticism.

In the first six months of 1993, there were more than 700 firebombings and other attacks, including the torching of a dwelling in the western city of Solingen that led to the deaths of five Turkish nationals.

But Dolgenbrodt was something new.

Until then, skinheads and neo-Nazis in black leather had always been blamed for the attacks; never before had proper, upstanding burghers passed the hat for an anti-foreigner firebombing.

Foreign journalists rushed to the lakeside village to report the story of evil in Arcadia. Leading politicians called for swift action.

Now, 3 1/2 years later, the truth behind the firebombing is finally coming out. The picture of Dolgenbrodt is being redrawn, and it is proving to be something more complex than a simple tale of racism from the gut.

Skinhead toughs torched the hostel, it’s true, and a few villagers have now confessed to having put them up to it. But the real causes of the attack now appear to have been stupidity and plain colorblind greed--the sort that has afflicted nearly all of eastern Germany as it makes its rough ride from communism to capitalism atop a tidal wave of real estate speculation.

The target of the Molotov cocktails, it seems, was not so much a dwelling destined for black Africans as it was a structure the village residents believed was about to become a local moneymaker as a brand-new resort.

Fear of losing a raging revenue stream--more than rage at a stream of new immigrants--apparently ignited the flames.

Much of what is now known about Dolgenbrodt’s firebombing comes from the testimony of Silvio Jackowski, the only person convicted so far of involvement in the attack. He bought the gasoline for the Molotov cocktails, and he drove the getaway car.

Jackowski did not sing until after his conviction last year--when the judge who had sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment reduced that to three years’ probation, warning him that he would land back in jail if he did not behave.

Now, thanks to Jackowski’s belated testimony, four more villagers have been detained on suspicion of instigating arson: Hans-Juergen Schmidt, a power-plant laborer who allegedly supplied oil and bottles for the firebombs; Schmidt’s son, Marco; Thomas Oste, a florist who lived next door to the doomed hostel; and Gerd Graefen, an electrician who allegedly chipped in for the attack.

Other investigations continue, and some villagers hope that once blame is clearly established, the name “Dolgenbrodt” will no longer be synonymous with racism.

“The disparagement of the whole village has to stop,” says Klaus Walzer, head of the local fire brigade. “The perpetrators have to be punished.”

Dolgenbrodt is not your typical northeastern German farming hamlet of dust-colored houses and sandy potato fields. Set amid pretty forests on an isolated peninsula, it is wild enough to attract herds of deer and wild boar, yet close enough to Berlin to lure weekend cottagers.

The East German minister of the interior had a dacha here. So did at least one member of the Politburo, the postmaster general, the minister of geology, assorted Olympic athletes, planning commissioners, security officers and others. Many of them set up housekeeping with the help of the mayor at the time, Ute Preissler.

Then came the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The East German state began to totter, and anyone sitting on a halfway-decent piece of real estate was filled with anxiety: What would happen when capitalism came? Who really held title? Would pre-Communist owners come back to reclaim their farms and flats?

Soon enough, here in Dolgenbrodt, a bombshell hit: The son of a former major landowner, who had fled the Gestapo and settled in Brazil, had hired a lawyer and was demanding his family estate back. “It’s about 90% of the village,” resident Johan Hille says.

The savvier members of the dacha-dwelling class realized they had better get their titles cleared while they still had a chance.

Those with the money and sophistication to hire lawyers and buy land outright paid off the heir in Brazil; their titles are now secure.

But these pricey dealings only intensified the angst of the villagers who did not have the money or the vision to observe these costly new Western legal niceties.

They wanted clear titles too, and for them, Mayor Preissler seemed to be a guardian angel.

According to court records, she teamed up with a Berlin-based real estate broker named Lothar Poetschke and began making the rounds of Dolgenbrodt’s dirt roads, offering to help villagers buy and sell their plots while there was still time.

At what price? The moneyed swells with their lawyers had done things properly, for about $35 a square meter, but the lesser lights of the community decided to wing it for less than $1 a square meter, kidding themselves that this had bought them clear title. These deals are now the subject of a criminal investigation.

And not only that: The village council also agreed to give the mayor’s broker friend, Poetschke, an option to purchase the lakefront youth hostel for about $650,000 and turn it into a hotel-spa. And who should be slated to become the director but Preissler.

Then, just when the villagers believed that they had put their real estate woes behind them, the state of Brandenburg had a surprise: It needed the youth hostel, at least temporarily, to shelter some foreign asylum-seekers for the winter. The hotel-spa would have to wait.

Given the anxious climate of the time, some villagers found this new setback too much to bear. Though the asylum-seekers were to be blacks from Africa, Preissler told villagers that they would be Gypsies. However much blacks may be discriminated against in eastern Germany, it doesn’t match the fear and loathing faced by Gypsies in Europe.

Hille believes that Preissler misrepresented the asylum-seekers’ nationalities on purpose, hoping to whip up villagers’ fighting spirit, block the asylum-seekers’ arrival, protect local property values and preserve her own position as spa-director-to-be.

“When you say the word ‘Gypsy’ in German, you’re saying theft,” Hille says. “That’s why she told the people Gypsies were coming--to terrify them. She mastered the scene completely.”

As the Africans’ move-in day grew closer, anti-Gypsy sentiment reached a frenzied state in Dolgenbrodt.

Graefen, one of the four now accused, circulated a petition denouncing the asylum-hostel project. One local man took to flying the Reichskriegsflagge, an eagle-spangled naval flag flown in imperial Germany and now a symbol of the extreme right.

The state of Brandenburg sent security guards, who strung protective barbed wire around the youth hostel. That did little to cool things down.

Angry villagers called a meeting in Dolgenbrodt’s single pub to plan civil defense measures against the “Gypsies.” A system of street patrols and a telephone round robin were worked out.

Meanwhile, in Berlin, the phone rang at Poetschke’s real estate office; it was Preissler. A former bookkeeper for Poetschke’s firm has testified that she overheard the near-hysterical mayor shrieking on a speakerphone: “You’ve got to do something! This can’t be allowed to happen! They must not be let in!”

It was at this critical point, Jackowski says, that he got his offer from Oste, the florist, of about $1,600 for the firebombing of the hostel.

In the end, Jackowski made much more than $1,600 for the attack.

Once the criminal investigation against him began, he says, the instigators gave him $7,730 more to keep his mouth shut.

Now that the whole story is coming out anyway, many villagers hope that the ripples of blame will spread beyond Jackowski and the four now accused.

They point out that Oste has large debts and was not in a position to drop more than $9,000 for a firebombing and subsequent hush money. Oste, they speculate, must have had a backer.

Poetschke and Preissler have already been questioned by the regional prosecutor, and they deny any wrongdoing.

Another prosecutor, working in the state capital of Potsdam, threw a new net over Dolgenbrodt two weeks ago, raiding the homes and offices of 13 more villagers. This time, the search warrants cite suspicion of improper real estate dealings, and, according to German press reports, one of the homes was Preissler’s.