Jewish leader angers German conservatives with attack on "Leading Culture"

Speaking at a Berlin rally against neo-Nazi violence last week attended by over 200,000 people, Spiegel said: "What's all this talk about the Leitkultur? Is it perhaps German Leitkultur to hunt down foreigners, set fire to synagogues and kill the homeless?"

"Ladies and gentlemen of the political class: think about what you are saying and stop setting things ablaze with words!" said Spiegel. The idea of a German Leitkultur - a defining or lead culture - was expounded last month by the Christian Democrats (CDU) who have been in opposition since the 1998 defeat of Helmut Kohl by Social Democratic (SPD) Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

"Leitkultur" actually sounds harsher in German than it does in any of its English translations. The SPD and their Greens coalition partner have trashed the concept and Schroeder's parliamentary leader, Peter Struck, attacked the CDU for using what he termed "Nazi vocabulary".

CDU leaders insist that all they want under the Leitkultur banner is for Germany's 7.1 million foreigners to learn the German language, respect the constitution and accept German social norms.

But many people do not understand the term in this way. The leaders of the CDU and its CSU Bavarian sister party, Angela Merkel and Edmund Stoiber, were jeered and booed by protesters when they joined last week's Berlin rally which was held on the anniversary of the 1938 "night of broken glass" which marked the start of the Holocaust.

Reaction of CDU CSU leaders to Spiegel's remarks has been swift and angry. The CSU parliamentary leader in Berlin, Michael Glos, accused Spiegel of damaging his own cause and "carrying things too far". Alois Glueck, the CSU leader in Bavaria's state parliament, said: "This does not contribute to integration but rather polarises."

CDU parliamentary member Martin Hohmann, declared Spiegel's words were "a major gaffe" and "vicious". The Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported that leading CDU CSU members, who received an advance text of the Spiegel's speech, had sought to put pressure on the Jewish leader to omit the passages on Leitkultur but that Spiegel refused. A CDU CSU spokesman said he did not know anything about such an initiative.

Fearing a battle with Germany's 85,000-member Jewish community, a CDU executive committee member, Friedbert Pflueger, warned his party over escalating the row with the Central Council of Jews. Pflueger said it was Spiegel's right and obligation to speak out about his concerns over far-right violence.

Rightist crime has risen sharply this year although the number of active neo-Nazis in Germany remains small. Reported anti-Semitic crimes almost doubled in the third quarter of 2000. There were 291 reported anti-Semitic crimes in Germany during the months of July, August and September compared with 157 reported such crimes during the second quarter, according to government figures.

Two synagogues have been hit by firebombs in Germany this year. A grenade attack in Duesseldorf last July injured 10 people - six of whom were Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The motive for this attack has not been determined and police have still made no arrests.

Media reports say six people have been killed in neo-Nazi violence in Germany since the start of this year. A total of 93 people have been killed in rightist violence since the 1990 German unification.

Germany's domestic security agency, the Verfassungsschutz, says there are some 51,000 active neo-Nazis and rightists prepared to use violence nationwide. Germany's total population is 82 million.

(la/dpa)