# Manfred Roeder

Manfred Richard Kurt 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.

## Early life

Roeder was born in Berlin-Friedenau to an Evangelical family. His father was an engineer and later a SA-Obersturmführer. In 1939, Roeder's father sent him to the National Political Institute of Education in Plön. After a confrontiation with the school's director, Roeder was sent to a Heimschule run by the SS in 1943.
In January 1945, Roeder enlisted for service in the Volkssturm and participated in the Battle of Berlin. In 1947, he finished his Abitur at Lilienthal-Gymnasium [de].
He studied German studies and philosophy for two semesters in Berlin before switching to legal science at the University of Münster and University of Bonn. During his student years, he joined the Evangelical Student Congregation [de] and became active with Moral Re-Armament (MRA) in 1950. Roeder undertook his legal clerkship at Hamm Higher Regional Court on 1 September 1954, but dropped out of his training to work freelance for MRA. In December 1961, he continued his studies and after completion of his second state exam, he was employed as a paralegal at US-Headquarters Command in Berlin-Dahlem between June 1966 and July 1969. He received his lawyer's licence on 23 January 1967

## Career

In 1965, Roeder joined the CDU and was active in an Evangelical church council. In 1967, he founded Demokratische Intiative, intended as a conservative counter-movement to the left-wing Außerparlamentarische Opposition. In 1969, he moved to Bensheim, where he joined Reichenberg Fellowship. He married his wife Gertrud, the daughter of his former Napola school principal, the same year.
Roeder's radical right-wing ideology was first noted by the East German Stasi in 1966, but an effort to monitor him was abandoned by the beginning of the 1970s, though a detailed building plan of his residence remained in the archives.
In 1970, Roeder left the CDU and along with six other, he founded "Bürgerinitiative gegen moralische und politische Anarchie", later shortened to "Deutsche Bürgerinitiative". The movement initial focus was opposition to pornography, protesting at erotic conventions, defacing sex work ads and writing petitions against pornographic magazines. By June 1971, his rhetoric shifted towards antisemitic and racist content. He forged ties with the far-right political scene in Germany, such as the NPD, and abroad, including the Ku Klux Klan. Media labelled Roeder a "politclown" for his far-fetched ventures such as writing a letters to foreign leaders, such as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin for help in "restoring the Reich" or Brazilian president Ernesto Geisel to release the detained Nazi war criminal Gustav Wagner with the reason as "to not sully [his] soldier's honor", as well as founding two self-proclaimed "Reichstags" in Regensburg and Flensburg.
Roeder moved to Schwarzenborn, where he lived for the remaineder of his life at a compound he named the "Reichshof". He held meetings with other members of the Völkisch movement at the property in the decades that followed.
Also in 1971, Roeder briefly served as the attorney of Rudolf Heß and made public efforts to have him released from prison until Heß's suicide in 1986.
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 and 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 [de] ("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.
In August 1980, the Deutsche Aktionsgruppen attacked a refugee accommodation in Hamburg with molotov cocktails, killing two Vietnamese boat people. Because of his integral role in a terrorist organisation Roeder was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 1982. His trial was attended by several of his supporters, including Uwe Böhnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, who later created the National Socialist Underground militant group which perpetrated several xenophobic murders between 2001 and 2010. Roeder 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 firing 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.

## Death

Roeder died on 30 July 2014 at the age of 85. A year before his death, Roeder's house was bought by the daughter of Australian Holocaust denier Michèle Renouf and remained in use as a neo-Nazi meeting grounds as late as 2018.