The Federal Ministry of the Interior today outlawed the “racist-nationalist” organization “Artgemeinschaft”, calling it a “far-right organization, against international understanding and the constitutional order”.

According to information broadcast by the North and West German Radio Television NDR and WDR, since dawn, special police forces have been searching the apartments, offices and cars of 39 executives of the organization in at least ten states, confiscating assets and collecting evidence. The organization has been around since 1951, when it was founded by Nazi Wilhelm Kusserov, and authorities estimate it has 150 members, including many young people, but also children, as the aim was to attract families.

The “hard” core of the “Artgemeinschaft” consists of about 40 people and there are eight regional groups and “circles of friends”. The children of the members of the group are raised according to pagan customs and German-Teutonic traditions, while Darwin’s theory and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are a central point of reference. Members consider themselves to be protecting a Norse-German race, superior to all others. “In this way they are directly linked to the racial theory of the Third Reich,” pointed out the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Among the members of the organization was the neo-Nazi Stefan Ernst, who in 2019 murdered the governor of Kassel Walter Luebke and is serving a life sentence.