Extreme right-wing groups to converge on Munich on Hitler's birthday, today

Groups consisting of young Germans from across the country are set to hold a conference in the city on Hitler's birthday tomorrow

Adolf Hitler

This Saturday will mark the gathering of a coalition of German right-wing groups which will hold what they are calling a “regional conference” in Munich. The extreme right-wing Danubia fraternity has also been invited to attend the event that is set to take place on Adolf Hitler's birthday. The Nazi leader was born on April 20th, 1889.

The meeting, scheduled to be held in Munich's Old Town, is apparently just one in a series planned by the Dachverband Deutsche Burschenschaft, the umbrella organisation of German student fraternities. The organisation has already been a source of protests in German cities of Kassel and Heidelberg, and one conference in Freiburg was cancelled.

According to a spokesman, the organiser of the series is Bruno Burchart, a member of a Viennese fraternity called Olympia that has close ties with Danubia. In 2005, Olympia invited British Holocaust denier David Irving to be a guest speaker.

The conference have been billed as "continuing education seminars to teach young people about issues such as democracy.” Suddeutsche Zeitung says that no information was available about the exact program of Saturday’s event or those expected to attend. The group maintains that it is only by coincidence that the meeting is taking place on the day of Hitler’s birthday, and in the German city most closely associated with the Nazi leader.

A year ago, a Danubia member is said to have stated in a student newspaper that on of their conference speakers had complained that "Nazi history, women, foreigners and the Vaterland” had become taboo subjects in Germany and stated that resisting this "dictatorship of speech" was a “duty.”

German intelligence services have recently said that among Danubia’s active members were "individuals with current or former links to right-wing extremists“ and that activists from the Munich Neo-Nazi scene had been known to participate in Danubia events.

Munich police said there has so far been no indication that protests were planned.