Right-Wing Extremism and Criminal Law: The Trial of the So-Called National Socialist Underground

Right-wing extremism remains an acute threat to democratic civil society that must be taken seriously. In addition to preventive and repressive socio-political responses that comply with the rule of law, criminal law has an important role to play in this context. Using the trial (2013–2018) of the so-called National Socialist Underground (NSU) as an example, the project ex­am­ined this role, focusing on the potentialities and limitations of criminal law and criminal procedure in landmark trials.
Key issues studied include the theory of the single perpetrator versus the theory of a trio of perpetrators; the function of accessory prosecution (Nebenklage) and the treatment of victims and survivors at trial; the grounds the court gave for its judgment and its explication of the social causes of the NSU; the proportionality and effectiveness of the punishment imposed; the conduct of defense counsel; the amount of time allotted for the filing of an appeal as compared to the amount of time allowed for submission of the judgment; and the conclusions that have been drawn from the trial. In addition, acts of right-wing extremist violence com­mit­ted after the NSU trial as well as responses to these acts were examined, including the attacks in Halle (2019) and Hanau (2020) and the assassination (2019) of Walter Lübcke, president of the regional authority of Kassel in the state of Hesse. National Socialist criminal law was also analyzed in order to better understand, from a historical perspective, the formation and development of democratic criminal law and its role in the prevention and punishment of right-wing extremist crime.
The project included a two-part seminar co-organized with Professor Dr. Michael Heghmanns at the University of Münster. The first part of the seminar took place in the winter semester of 2019/2020, the second part in the summer semester of 2021. A lengthy publication in an online encyclopedia concluded the project.

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