{"id":1544,"date":"2025-07-28T00:09:37","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T00:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/?p=1544"},"modified":"2025-07-28T00:10:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T00:10:55","slug":"horst-mahler-1936-2025-an-intellectual-titan-of-european-nationalism-and-historical-revisionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jailingopinions.com\/realhistory\/horst-mahler-1936-2025-an-intellectual-titan-of-european-nationalism-and-historical-revisionism\/","title":{"rendered":"Horst Mahler (1936-2025): an intellectual titan of European nationalism and historical revisionism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tambi\u00e9n disponible en traducci\u00f3n al espa\u00f1ol.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We regret to report that the German lawyer and political activist Horst Mahler died today, aged 89. Horst had been seriously ill for some time, including years that he spent in prison for political \u2018crimes\u2019, including \u2018Holocaust denial\u2019. He had both legs amputated while imprisoned in Brandenburg, near Berlin, and in recent years was in a wheelchair, but he remained intellectually active and politically committed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been numerous nationalist activists over the years who made an ideological journey from the far left, but few if any have made that journey so publicly and in such remarkable intellectual depth as Horst Mahler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His staunchly national socialist father committed suicide in 1949, unable to cope with the consequences of the Third Reich\u2019s defeat. At that time Horst was still at school and the family was living in the Soviet-controlled zone of what later became \u2018East Germany\u2019 (the \u2018German Democratic Republic\u2019). They then moved to Berlin and successfully crossed into the British-controlled zone of West Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Horst Mahler speaking at a rally in Leipzig in 2001<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Horst completed his education in West Berlin during the mid-1950s, the front line of the Cold War, studying law at the US-funded Free University of Berlin. In his early student years he remained associated with German nationalism, but while still an undergraduate he moved towards the radical left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until 1960 Horst was a leading activist in the SDS, the original student wing of the main German social-democratic party SPD. In 1960 he and other SDS members were expelled from the SPD for their radicalism, and during the ensuing decade they became ever more militant. In effect, Horst and his comrades became slightly older mentors to the German ultra-left of the late 1960s, calling for revolutionary violence against the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this capacity Horst was not only the lawyer for the Marxist terrorists of what is best known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang (or Red Army Faction), he was a senior member of this terrorist organisation. In 1970 he helped organise the escape of its senior members, and spent some time in Jordan training with the Marxist wing of Palestinian guerrilla warfare, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October 1970 Horst was arrested and subsequently convicted for bank robberies carried out to fund Marxist terrorism, and for organising prison escapes. He remained in prison until 1980, serving ten years of a 14-year sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On his release, Horst was greatly assisted by Gerhard Schr\u00f6der, a young socialist lawyer who helped him resume his legal career. Schr\u00f6der went on to become leader of the SPD and Chancellor of Germany (1998-2005), and is today best known for his corrupt business ties to Putin\u2019s Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n