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Far-Right Shooting Shatters an Already Fragile Sense of Security in Germany

The attack showed that no part of the country is immune to the potential for violence fueled by anti-immigrant hatred.

At a vigil on Thursday near one of the bars in Hanau, Germany, that were attacked by a far-right gunman, relatives held up photos of the victims.Credit...Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images

HANAU, Germany — Hanau, a small city in western Germany, considered itself a melting pot, an island of tolerance. That was before a racist extremist opened fire at a hookah bar Wednesday night, killing nine mostly young people in Germany’s worst attack in recent memory.

A working-class community just outside Frankfurt, Hanau was ethnically diverse long before the issue of immigration began tearing apart German politics with the arrival of nearly a million asylum seekers five years ago.

“We have lived very peacefully together,” said Metin Kan, a 43-year-old of Turkish descent, who said he was a friend of one of the victims, the owner of the Midnight bar.

The attack Wednesday did more than shock Germany. It drove home a fear that no part of the country is immune to the potential for violence that has been unleashed with the rise of a far right angered by Germany’s changing society.

The attack, the authorities said, was carried out by a 43-year-old German who had posted a racist video and screed on the internet. He was later found dead from a gunshot, along with his mother, at his home, the authorities said, without identifying them.

His rampage took place in the heart of a region that prides itself on diversity and tolerance. The victims were not among the recent asylum seekers in Germany from places like Syria who have so angered the far right.

Rather, for the most part, they came from Turkish and Kurdish families that have lived in Germany for generations.

People of foreign descent in Hanau, a city of 95,000, often object to being called immigrants. In many cases, they are German citizens, born in Germany.

That was apparently the case for several of the victims, including one identified by relatives as Ferhat Unvar, 23, who had just finished training to be a heating system installer. Mr. Unvar, from a Kurdish family, had never visited his parents’ homeland, said Aydin Yilmaz, a cousin.

“It’s important to say that,” Mr. Yilmaz said. “He was born in Hanau. He’s a German. It was an act of terror against us all.”

“He had nothing against anyone,” Mr. Yilmaz said. “He just wanted to spend a nice evening with his friends.”

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A makeshift memorial was in front of one of the bars attacked by the gunman.Credit...Martin Meissner/Associated Press

Mr. Yilmaz was among dozens of people who gathered Thursday afternoon at a Kurdish community center, a simple building across from a Harley-Davidson dealership on the city outskirts. Pictures of the victims were tacked to the wall. People drank strong tea from paper cups and talked quietly.

Mr. Unvar’s father was among them, looking gaunt with grief. Asked by a reporter if he wanted to speak about his son, the father nodded, but was unable. A woman standing next to him apologized, saying he was in shock.

Waves of “Gastarbeiter,” or guest workers, were brought to Germany in the 1950s and 1960s because of labor shortages, many of them from Turkey. Among them, Mr. Yilmaz said, was Mr. Unvar’s grandfather, who worked on paving crews, helping to build the streets that the perpetrator walked on.

Many people in western Germany have regarded right-wing sentiment as largely an eastern German phenomenon. When waves of Syrians refugees arrived in 2015, they were barely noticed in some western cities where there were already large minority communities.

In the aftermath of the attack, some residents wondered if the right-wing sentiment that had gripped other regions had finally arrived here.

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The sites that were attacked were popular with young people from Hanau’s tight-knit Kurdish and Turkish communities.Credit...Thomas Lohnes/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

But Hanau has apparently long harbored right-wing sympathizers. In the last city elections, the far-right, anti-immigration Republikaner party received almost 10 percent of the votes.

That was even before the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, became the first far-right party to enter Parliament since World War II, in Germany’s last national elections in 2018.

“The AfD,” Mr. Kan said, “they’re the ones who are profiting from this hate.”

German politicians scrambled on Thursday to express sorrow and horror at the attack, and to tamp down fears in Germany’s immigrant communities that they are endangered.

“Everything is being done to clarify the background of these horrible murders to the last detail,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin, adding that the evidence indicated “right-wing extremist, racist motives.”

“Racism is a poison,” she said. “Hatred is a poison.”

Germany has some of the world’s strictest gun laws and last year moved to tighten them further, including requiring background checks, after a spike in shootings by right-wing extremists.

German authorities did not officially identify the gunman, in keeping with the country’s strict privacy laws. But the local authorities said he had a valid gun license.

It was issued to Tobias Rathjen, said an official from Main-Kinzig, the district that includes Hanau, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to disclose the information.

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‘Hatred Is Poison’: Merkel Condemns Far-Right Attack

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany addressed reporters following a racially motivated shooting that killed nine people at two bars in Hanau.

Today is a very sad day for our country The deep pain felt by people in Hanau today over the violent death of so many fellow citizens is a pain I also feel personally, and a pain felt across the country. Hatred is poison. And this poison exists in our society and it is to blame for far too many crimes.

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Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany addressed reporters following a racially motivated shooting that killed nine people at two bars in Hanau.CreditCredit...Kay Nietfeld/DPA, via Associated Press

Terrorism experts and German media outlets identified the gunman as Tobias R., whose photos matched images of a man who posted a nearly two-minute screed on the YouTube page of a Tobias Rathjen, which has since been taken down.

Speaking in accented English, he addressed Americans — his reasons were unclear — citing various conspiracy theories and urging them to “Fight now.”

His actions mirrored those of a German gunman who left a racist diatribe online in English, then attempted to storm a synagogue in Halle on Yom Kippur last October. He shot and killed a passer-by and a customer at a kebab shop.

“The profiles of the all the attackers are uncannily similar,” said Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at Kings College London. “All were socially isolated men who spent a lot of time online and had problems with women. They all cobbled their ideologies together in a do-it-yourself manifesto.”

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President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, center, his wife, Elke Buedenbender, and Hesse’s state premier, Volker Bouffier, right, laid wreaths at the scenes of the attack on Thursday.Credit...Maximilian Von Lachner/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Hanau shootings add to an expanding number of far-right attacks, in a political environment that has grown more combative with the AfD’s rise.

The number of far-right hate crimes surged from 2017 to 2018, to 1,664 from about 1,200, according to police statistics. The attacks — including stabbings, beatings, threats and harassment — targeted minorities and politicians who voiced support for refugees.

More recent figures have not been released yet, but violence and threats have continued.

In June, a conservative politician who supported refugees, Walter Lübcke, was fatally shot. A man with neo-Nazi ties and a history of attacking minorities confessed to the killing, which officials called Germany’s first far-right political assassination since the Nazi era.

Security forces then revealed that Mr. Lübcke was one of many people on a neo-Nazi hit list.

The attack in Halle came less than four months later.

And last week, the authorities broke up a suspected far-right terrorist network that they said had been plotting to attack politicians, asylum seekers and Muslims. Among the 12 men arrested was a police officer.

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Coroners carrying bodies out of one of the crime scenes.Credit...Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In the past three decades, the German population has grown increasingly diverse, leading to bitter disputes over who qualifies as German and who is considered “foreign.” Roughly a quarter of Germany’s nearly 82 million people are immigrants or their descendants.

The conflict over the country’s identity spilled into the streets in the eastern city of Chemnitz in August 2018, when Germans flashing Nazi salutes chased down people they thought looked like immigrants.

The Hanau shootings have deepened the sense of insecurity among minority groups, leaving them frustrated at what they regard as a tepid government response to growing right-wing movements.

“We would like to see the government take more decisive action against right-wing extremism,” said Mehmet Tanriverdi, vice chair of the Kurdish Community in Germany, who visited the shooting scene Thursday.

A few minutes later, sirens and the rumble of police motorcycles announced a motorcade carrying Horst Seehofer, the German interior minister, one of numerous political leaders who swept through to offer condolences.

As Mr. Seehofer spoke to reporters in front of the Midnight bar, a man in the crowd shouted, “It’s all just theater!”

Earlier, state lawmakers held a moment of silence and canceled their planned session. Flags on public buildings were lowered to half-staff.

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Police removed the car that was believed to belong to the suspected gunman.Credit...Armando Babani/EPA, via Shutterstock

The attack was ‘‘one of the most bitter hours in our peacetime history,” said Claus Kaminsky, Hanau’s mayor, but “we will do everything humanly possible to defend our shared solidarity.’’

Citizens, too, were anxious to show that the vast majority remains tolerant, thronging the city’s market square carrying homemade signs. Across the street from the Midnight bar, people left flowers and lit candles.

But Farak Demir, a friend of one victim, said he was also among those suddenly wondering whether respect and acceptance were as widespread as he had thought.

“We have no security, foreigners in Germany,” he said. “It happens again and again.”

Jack Ewing reported from Hanau, and Melissa Eddy from Berlin. Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting from Hanau and Tiffany May and Austin Ramzy from Hong Kong.

Jack Ewing writes about business, banking, economics and monetary policy from Frankfurt, and contributes to breaking news coverage. Previously he worked for a decade at BusinessWeek magazine in Frankfurt, where he was European regional editor. More about Jack Ewing

Melissa Eddy is a correspondent based in Berlin who covers German politics, social issues and culture. She came to Germany as a Fulbright scholar in 1996, and previously worked for The Associated Press in Frankfurt, Vienna and the Balkans. More about Melissa Eddy

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: In German City, A Racist Attack ‘Against Us All’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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