Frank Rennicke
Encyclopedia
Frank Rennicke is a German
singer-songwriter from Braunschweig
in Lower Saxony
. He is linked with the far right
political scene in Germany, and describes himself as a "national bard".
Rennicke, who sings and plays guitar,
is heavily influenced by the musical style of older German left-wing singer-songwriters (Liedermacher) such as Reinhard Mey
. He has said that Mey is his role model musically. He is married and has six children.
, describe the Oder-Neisse line
as a "disgraceful border" ("Schandgrenze"), depict Polish people as "contaminators of German soil", and express pride in Germany. Criticism of left-wing groups is also included in his lyrics. Some of his recordings have been categorized by Germany's Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien
(Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons) as having content that may be harmful to young listeners. Rennicke is welcomed at concerts and demonstrations by nationalists, fascists
and younger far right skinheads.
Rennicke was a member of the far right Wiking-Jugend
(Viking Youth) organisation until it was banned in 1994, after which he became a member of the National Democratic Party of Germany
(NPD). In 1996 the far right activist Torsten Lemmer published the book Sänger für Deutschland: Die Biographie des Volkssängers Frank Rennicke (Singer for Germany: The Biography of the Folk Singer Frank Rennicke).
In November 2000, the Böblingen
magistrates' court sentenced Rennicke to 10 months' imprisonment for sedition
of the people (Volksverhetzung
), for which he was granted parole. The Stuttgart
state court overruled this decision, and on October 15, 2002, it sentenced Rennicke to 17 months' imprisonment, on eight counts of Volksverhetzung and for contravening the law forbidding the distribution of writings that may be harmful to young people. He was again granted parole.
In 2001, Ingrid Rimland
, the wife of the Holocaust denier
Ernst Zündel
, published a petition to the Canadian
government calling for Zündel's release, which was signed by Rennicke and his wife Ute. Rennicke is a founding member of the Verein zur Rehabilitierung der wegen Bestreitens des Holocaust Verfolgten (Association for the Rehabilitation of Those Persecuted due to Holocaust Denial), an organisation originally proposed by Horst Mahler
. Other members include Zündel, Gerd Honsik
, Germar Rudolf
, Manfred Roeder
, Wilhelm Stäglich
, Robert Faurisson
and the widow of Otto Ernst Remer
.
In 2009, he was nominated as a candidate for the office of President of Germany
by the right-wing parties DVU
and NPD but gained only their votes (4 of 1224) and was not considered a serious candidate by the German media. For the 2010 elections on June 30, which had to be called because of the resignation of president Horst Köhler
, Rennicke was again nominated, this time only by the NPD. He received three votes during the first two election rounds and withdrew from the election during the third round.
Rennicke played a leading role in Projekt Schulhof-CD (Project Schoolyard CD), an attempt by the NPD to propagate nationalist ideas among young people.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
singer-songwriter from Braunschweig
Braunschweig
Braunschweig , is a city of 247,400 people, located in the federal-state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker river, which connects to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser....
in Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony is a German state situated in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen states of Germany...
. He is linked with the far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
political scene in Germany, and describes himself as a "national bard".
Rennicke, who sings and plays guitar,
is heavily influenced by the musical style of older German left-wing singer-songwriters (Liedermacher) such as Reinhard Mey
Reinhard Mey
Reinhard Friedrich Michael Mey is a German singer-songwriter, known to fans as "Liedermacher". In France he is known as Frédérik Mey....
. He has said that Mey is his role model musically. He is married and has six children.
Lyrics and political views
His lyrics typically feature far right views. Some of his songs glorify the WehrmachtWehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
, describe the Oder-Neisse line
Oder-Neisse line
The Oder–Neisse line is the border between Germany and Poland which was drawn in the aftermath of World War II. The line is formed primarily by the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers, and meets the Baltic Sea west of the seaport cities of Szczecin and Świnoujście...
as a "disgraceful border" ("Schandgrenze"), depict Polish people as "contaminators of German soil", and express pride in Germany. Criticism of left-wing groups is also included in his lyrics. Some of his recordings have been categorized by Germany's Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien
Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien
The Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons is an upper-level German federal agency subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. It is responsible for examining media works allegedly harmful to young people and entering these onto an...
(Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons) as having content that may be harmful to young listeners. Rennicke is welcomed at concerts and demonstrations by nationalists, fascists
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and younger far right skinheads.
Rennicke was a member of the far right Wiking-Jugend
Wiking-Jugend
The "Wiking-Jugend" was a German Neo-Nazi organization modelled after the Hitlerjugend.The Sozialistische Reichspartei was outlawed in 1952, together with its youth organization "Reichsjugend"...
(Viking Youth) organisation until it was banned in 1994, after which he became a member of the National Democratic Party of Germany
National Democratic Party of Germany
The National Democratic Party of Germany – The People's Union , is a far right German nationalist party. It was founded in 1964 a successor to the German Reich Party . Party statements self-identify as Germany's "only significant patriotic force"...
(NPD). In 1996 the far right activist Torsten Lemmer published the book Sänger für Deutschland: Die Biographie des Volkssängers Frank Rennicke (Singer for Germany: The Biography of the Folk Singer Frank Rennicke).
In November 2000, the Böblingen
Böblingen
Böblingen is a town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, seat of Böblingen District. Physically Sindelfingen and Böblingen are continuous.-History:Böblingen was founded by Count Wilhelm von Tübingen-Böblingen in 1253. Württemberg acquired the town in 1357, and on 12 May 1525 one of the bloodiest battles...
magistrates' court sentenced Rennicke to 10 months' imprisonment for sedition
Sedition
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent to lawful authority. Sedition may include any...
of the people (Volksverhetzung
Volksverhetzung
Volksverhetzung is a concept in German criminal law that bans the incitement of hatred against a segment of the population. It often applies in, though it is not limited to, trials relating to Holocaust denial in Germany...
), for which he was granted parole. The Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
state court overruled this decision, and on October 15, 2002, it sentenced Rennicke to 17 months' imprisonment, on eight counts of Volksverhetzung and for contravening the law forbidding the distribution of writings that may be harmful to young people. He was again granted parole.
In 2001, Ingrid Rimland
Ingrid Rimland
Ingrid Rimland, Ed.D. is a Ukrainian-born American author, child psychologist, activist and former social worker. She has written several novels loosely based upon her own experiences from growing up in a Mennonite community in Ukraine and as a refugee child during WWII...
, the wife of the Holocaust denier
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
Ernst Zündel
Ernst Zündel
Ernst Christof Friedrich Zündel is a German Holocaust denier and pamphleteer who was jailed several times in Canada for publishing literature which "is likely to incite hatred against an identifiable group" and for being a threat to national security, in the United States for overstaying his visa,...
, published a petition to the Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
government calling for Zündel's release, which was signed by Rennicke and his wife Ute. Rennicke is a founding member of the Verein zur Rehabilitierung der wegen Bestreitens des Holocaust Verfolgten (Association for the Rehabilitation of Those Persecuted due to Holocaust Denial), an organisation originally proposed by Horst Mahler
Horst Mahler
Horst Mahler is a former German lawyer and advocate of radical ideologies. He once was an extreme-left militant, a founding member of the Red Army Faction. Subsequently he became a Maoist and later shifted to the extreme-right. He was for a time a member of the National Democratic Party of Germany...
. Other members include Zündel, Gerd Honsik
Gerd Honsik
Gerd Honsik is an Austrian writer and lyric poet, and a prominent Holocaust denier.- Life :Honsik was a functionary in the Austrian "Volksbewegung" , also known as "Volksbewegung gegen Überfremdung" and "Ausländer-Halt-Bewegung" , as well as in...
, Germar Rudolf
Germar Rudolf
Germar Rudolf is a German chemist and Holocaust denier.-Background:Rudolf was born in Limburg an der Lahn, Hesse. After finishing secondary education in 1983 in Remscheid, Rudolf studied chemistry in Bonn, completing his studies in 1989. As a student, he joined A.V. Tuisconia Königsberg zu Bonn...
, Manfred Roeder
Manfred Roeder
Manfred Roeder is a former lawyer and Wehrmacht soldier, and a prominent Holocaust denier.- Life :Roeder attended a National Political Institute of Education in Plön. After the Second World War he was for a time a member of Germany's CDU party...
, Wilhelm Stäglich
Wilhelm Stäglich
Wilhelm Stäglich was a World War II army officer, later a financial judge in Hamburg, and a prominent Holocaust denier....
, Robert Faurisson
Robert Faurisson
Robert Faurisson is a French academic who is a Holocaust denier. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles, published in the Journal of Historical Review and elsewhere, as well as various letters he has sent to French newspapers , which deny various aspects of the Holocaust,...
and the widow of Otto Ernst Remer
Otto Ernst Remer
Otto-Ernst Remer was a German Wehrmacht officer who played a decisive role in stopping the 1944 20 July Plot against Adolf Hitler. During the war he was wounded nine times in combat...
.
In 2009, he was nominated as a candidate for the office of President of Germany
President of Germany
The President of the Federal Republic of Germany is the country's head of state. His official title in German is Bundespräsident . Germany has a parliamentary system of government and so the position of President is largely ceremonial...
by the right-wing parties DVU
German People's Union
The German People's Union is a nationalist political party in Germany. It was founded by publisher Gerhard Frey as an informal association in 1971 and established as a party in 1987. Financially, it is largely dependent on Frey....
and NPD but gained only their votes (4 of 1224) and was not considered a serious candidate by the German media. For the 2010 elections on June 30, which had to be called because of the resignation of president Horst Köhler
Horst Köhler
Horst Köhler is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union. He was President of Germany from 2004 to 2010. As the candidate of the two Christian Democratic sister parties, the CDU and the CSU, and the liberal FDP, Köhler was elected to his first five-year term by the Federal Assembly on...
, Rennicke was again nominated, this time only by the NPD. He received three votes during the first two election rounds and withdrew from the election during the third round.
Rennicke played a leading role in Projekt Schulhof-CD (Project Schoolyard CD), an attempt by the NPD to propagate nationalist ideas among young people.
External links (in German)
- http://www.rennicke.de/
- Singender Neonazi will Bundespräsident werden Die ZeitDie ZeitDie Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
s blog, 8 June 2010.