One of Europe’s most active nazi publishers has been hit by coordinated police raids in Germany, Poland, and Spain.
Der Schelm (which translates as The Rogue or The Knave) has been active since 2014 trying to exploit loopholes in European laws to circulate hardcore nazi material.
Its founder Adrian Preissinger is now 61 years old and has been an active nazi for decades, at first in the now largely defunct party NPD and its newspaper (later magazine) Deutsche Stimme.
Preissinger and his fellow extremists have always been linked to the most openly nazi wing of the NPD, including the late terrorist and Holocaust denier Horst Mahler.
In recent years they have also been part of the pro-Russian faction Europe’s far right, and Preissinger has long been thought to be hiding out in Moscow.
Among roughly a hundred books and pamphlets produced by Der Schelm, many were reprints of Third Reich propaganda, including virulent anti-semitism.
Leaked records from the publisher showed that among its keenest customers was an elected AfD councillor Carsten Härle, who was expelled from AfD in 2023 for being a neo-nazi.
Though Der Schelm has recently had its official base in Thailand, German police worked with international forces to raid a printing press in Poland and a property in Spain yesterday.
The Spanish connection is consistent with the longstanding ties of Hitler worshippers in that country with fellow fanatics across Europe.
It’s unsurprising that one of the first social media accounts to complain about the raids was Devenir Europeo, founded by ageing veterans of the Spanish nazi group CEDADE.
Their protégés and allies include Isabel Peralta, co-leader of the new racist street gang Núcleo Nacional, and the British magazine Heritage and Destiny whose editors had past ties to some of Der Schelm’s German operatives, even though Peralta and her friends take an opposite line to Der Schelm on Ukraine and Russia.
