Winning one for the Führer? Ex-Olympian Nadja Drygalla (Source: Frauenachter)

“THE THOUGHTS ARE FREE“ says an old German folk song, but apparently these thoughts do not include thoughts of love. That is the experience of twenty-three year-old Olympic rower Nadja Drygalla, who has just left the Olympic village in London after it was revealed that she has a boyfriend in Germany’s far-right political scene.

It seems that back in her hometown, the eastern German Baltic port of Rostock, Drygalla is in a relationship with Michael Fischer, a local member of the “National Socialists of Rostock” and the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), for which he unsuccessfully ran for the state legislature last year. Rostock already has a reputation for being brown – it captured headlines in 1992 when hundreds of skinheads attacked a dormitory for foreign asylum seekers to the applause of the locals – and Fischer himself was photographed last February leading a violent attack on anti-fascist protesters.

Drygalla’s relationship with Fischer, which has apparently been going on for years, has been an open secret since last year, even though the Olympic Committee claims no knowledge of it. Already a year ago, Drygalla, who had just started a career with the police, and was also active in the police’s own sports association, suddenly resigned. Her superiors apparently asked her to quit due to her affair with Fischer, since Lorenz Caffier, interior minister of the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, has been pursuing a hard line when it comes to neo-Nazis in the police. However, it is still unclear whether Caffier or any of his staff were aware of Drygalla's personal connections, or if they bothered to tip off the sports association.

After news of the liaison started spreading through the team, the German Olympic Sports Confederation’s chef de mission, Michael Vesper, called Drygalla in for a discussion yesterday. “She explained the matter from her point of view,” Vesper told journalists. “I made the problem clear to her. We then spoke intensively about the overall situation and her own position.” According to Vesper, Drygalla denied holding any racist attitudes and reaffirmed her allegiance to the Olympic Charter. At the end of the discussion, Drygalla announced her departure for home and Vesper accepted her decision.

Vesper didn’t want to pass judgment on Drygalla herself. “The decisive issue is what she herself thinks and what her attitude is towards democratic principles,” he said. “I have no doubt that she not only stands upon the foundation of the German constitution but also on that of the Olympic values.”

Right-wing extremist Michael Fischer photographed at a violent rally last February (Source: Kombinat Fortschritt) 

Particularly the Left Party is outraged that Drygalla was ever allowed to join the Olympic team in the first place. As Left politician Petra Pau told the progressive daily Tageszeitung,

Frau Drygalla is said to have a strong leaning towards the Nazi milieu. That isn’t new, and it wasn’t unknown. Nevertheless, agencies and organizations promoted her to the Olympic level and appointed her to Germany’s flagship team.

So far there is no solid evidence that Drygalla is an actual neo-Nazi herself, even though the anti-Nazi website Kombinat Fortschritt has compiled some rather sinister circumstantial evidence based on the young woman’s appearance on the profile of “Fail Better Photography,” a Facebook group started by Michael Fischer himself.

Aside from the fact that her liaison gives considerable grounds to doubt her loyalty to the constitution, it is remarkable what kinds of pictures one can find on the profile: There we see a {different} woman posing in 1990s style with a baseball bat and a “White Power” decal on her T-shirt, plus clothes with the “Final Resistance” label (“true Nazi streetwear” is how they advertise it), plus a salute to the band “Landser,” which is banned as a criminal organization.

So while there is plenty of guilt by association, there is still no smoking gun – or even a bloody knuckleduster. And yet there is little doubt that the pressure placed upon Drygalla to leave London was enormous. After the scandal surrounding the murderous “National Socialist Underground” terrorist group broke last November (I reported on it HERE), Angela Merkel’s government has been desperate to confirm her country’s democratic credentials at every opportunity. Political heads are rolling right and left in the NSU case. When you consider what is at stake for the government, sacrificing a mere rower is a small price to pay for political peace of mind.

Nadja Drygalla (second from left) rowing on Germany's women's eight (Source: dpa)

Drygalla's story is provoking a public discussion in Germany. While many welcome her departure, her local rowing club back home in Rostock is calling her treatment by the authorities Sippenhaft, i.e. the Nazi practice of “kin liability,” whereby the Gestapo would regularly arrest and torture a suspect's family members. Why, they ask, should she be punished for something her boyfriend did - and keeps doing?

So is Nadja Drygalla “guilty” of anything? As Vesper puts it, “If we had any indication that any member of this team were xenophobic, this person would not be part of our team. But what's at stake is always the person him or herself. And not their environment.”

Martin Sauer, a German rowing gold medalist, summed up his ambivalent feelings this way:

She never announced anywhere that she even had a boyfriend in this scene. This guy seems to play a role in her life. … I am absolutely against these (racist) values. But I can’t dictate to the woman who she should be together with.

Whatever Drygalla’s future in sports may be, in these Olympic games she is already a loser any way you look at it: The German women’s eight team took fifth place in the competition on July 31.

UPDATE, August 5, 2012:

In a statement to the German DPA press agency from her home town of Rostock, Nadja Drygalla today stated that her boyfriend left the NPD and the neo-Nazi movement in May of this year. Regardless of that, she said, "I have had no connection to his circle of friends and to this scene, and I reject it completely." She said she found Michael Fischer's membership in the neo-Nazi party to be "a burden" and she had seriously considered ending the relationship at one point. Drygalla also denied allegations that she had been sighted at a right-wing rally in 2009: "That isn't me, I can say that for certain. I regard this as unfair and unjustified."

In her telling of the story, Fischer - a law school drop-out - had had no interest whatsoever in politics when they first got together five years ago, but gradually drifted into the right-wing milieu and eventually joined the NPD and ran for state parliament. "I think I have a considerable share" in distancing him from the movement, she said. "It isn't a step you take from one day to the next, but he himself finally became clear on the direction he wanted to go."

Drygalla insists she wishes to continue in sports, possibly on an army sports team.

So is her story credible? The anti-fascist website Kombinat Fortschritt, which has been following Fischer's career for some time, is skeptical that he has really broken with the movement. However, they do admit that a photo making the rounds that supposedly shows Drygalla at a neo-Nazi event in 2009 is of another woman. (You can follow the breaking story at their website HERE.) 

The German government will likely call for an investigation into all the allegations swirling around the athlete. Federal interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrichs stated that the matter must be taken seriously, since "athletes are role models."

Pending any further decisions in her case, Drygalla has stated that she wants to take a short break from sports and start training again in September. 

UPDATE, August 6, 2012:

A spokesman for the right-wing National Democratic Party (NPD) of the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania announced today that Michael Fischer did indeed resign from the organization in May of this year.

Also today, German defense minister Thomas de Maizière told journalists that the Drygalla affair had been woefully mismanaged and that more restraint is in order in such cases: "Do we have to demand that athletes reveal who they are friends with, what they think? Where is the limit?"