Manfred Roeder

Manfred Roeder (6 February 1929 – 30 July 2014) was a German lawyer and Neo-Nazi terrorist. Roeder was a Holocaust denier and an early representative of the Reichsbürger movement.

Life
Born in Berlin, Roeder attended the National Political Institute of Education in Plön. As a teenage soldier, he participated in the Battle of Berlin in 1945. After the Second World War he was for a time a member of Germany's CDU party. After leaving the party, he forged ties with the far-right political scene in Germany and abroad, including the Ku Klux Klan.

By 1974, Roeder had begun to believe in the conspiracy theory that West Germany's constitution was invalid, as the German Reich had never ceased to exist. To affirm his belief, he contacted Karl Dönitz, the last leader of Nazi Germany. Dönitz regarded Roeder's ideas as ridiculous, and firmly stated that he no longer considered himself President of Germany. However, Roeder saw this as a resignation declaration; thus, he declared himself Dönitz's successor as the "Reichsverweser" (i.e. new German head of state) and announced a new government in form of the "Freiheitsbewegung Deutsches Reich" (Freedom Movement German Reich). Researcher Tobias Ginsburg argued that this move probably made Roeder the first Reichsbürger to claim a high-ranking title for himself. His activities as conspiracy theorist ultimately led Roeder to become a militant activist and eventually outright terrorist.

Roeder's career was marked by an abundance of criminal charges, including resistance against state authority, and battery. In 1980 the Deutsche Aktionsgruppen ("German Action Groups"), a neo-Nazi organisation founded by Roeder, carried out attacks against buildings that housed foreign workers and asylum seekers. Two people were murdered in these attacks. Roeder was classified as a terrorist by German legal authorities as a result of these activities.

Because of his integral role in a terrorist organisation Roeder was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 1982. He had planned a fire bomb attack which killed two Vietnamese refugees in August 1980. He was released in 1990, after serving two-thirds of his sentence, for good behaviour and a perceived social rehabilitation.

In 1997, the British current affairs program Panorama said that in 1995, Roeder had appeared, by invitation, as a speaker at the German military's officer training academy in Hamburg. This scandal, as well as the fact that Roeder had received financial donations from the military, led to the sacking of the academy's commander and the instatement of Rear-Admiral Rudolf Lange as his replacement, with the goal of restoring the good reputation of the academy.

In 1996, Roeder, together with other far-right extremists, perpetrated an attack on an exhibition in Erfurt detailing the role of the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany, for which he was charged with property damage and fined DM-4,500. In 1997, Roeder stood as the candidate of the far-right NPD in Stralsund in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern during the parliamentary elections, promoting himself as "Chancellor alternative 1998", but was unsuccessful.

After being sentenced to prison by the state courts of Schwerin and Rostock under Germany's Volksverhetzung law (incitement to hatred), and for other crimes, he was given a further ten months in September 2004 by the state court of Frankfurt for contempt of the state. In February 2005, a further sentencing for the same crime was passed by the court of Schwalmstadt. On 12 May 2005, he began a prison sentence in Gießen, but he was released shortly after on health grounds.

Roeder died on 30 July 2014 at the age of 85.