Plan for Aryan-style baby farm

Daily News/July 16, 2004

The normally tranquil West German village of Doerverden has been traumatised by a notorious neo-Nazi lawyer's plans to turn its 19th century manor house and adjoining estate into an Aryan-style baby farm designed to further the Nordic race.

The dubious project has been launched by Juergen Rieger, a wealthy 57-year-old Hamburg lawyer and specialist in defending members of the German far right, who himself carries convictions for incitement to racial hatred.

Rieger is well known for his neo-Nazi activities. The former member of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party has appeared at far right rallies in Britain and praised the former British Fascist Oswald Moseley.

He is also a fervent advocate of "racial purity".

'At first we thought he was merely planning to develop agricultural fertilisers and manure' In a book on the subject, he wrote of the "disastrous effects of bastardising races" and promised "the white giants are coming".

Earlier this year, Rieger paid R1,68-million for the estate.

This week, Doerverden's inhabitants have been shocked to learn of Rieger's plans for the Heisenhof estate.

"We are seriously worried about public order, the image of Doerverden is likely to suffer as a result of this project," confessed Rainer Herbst, the village mayor.

"At first we thought he was merely planning to develop agricultural fertilisers and manure. We didn't realise that human fertilisation is intended," he added.

The villagers' suspicions were aroused after German media reports revealed that the official purchaser of the Heisenhof was the "Wilhelm Tietjen Foundation for Fertilisation Ltd", a London-based fertility research organisation of which Rieger is the director.

The foundation is funded by the copious financial assets accrued by the late Wilhelm Tietjen, a diehard Nazi loyalist and stock market speculator who set up his fertility research organisation to further the Nordic races before his death in 2002. Teitejen was infertile.

The concept was first developed during the Third Reich when the Nazi party set up its notorious "Lebensborn" organisation under which German mothers were encouraged to produce offspring by submitting to sex with hand-picked SS men.

Rieger, who is also a senior member of a group which calls itself "Germanic faith community for life creation", maintains that the foundation aims to help childless couples produce children.

He claims that the foundation is based in London for legal reasons: "The use of surrogate mothers is banned in Germany but not in England," he said.

Rieger has declined to comment on the "Nordic" aspect of his proposed fertility clinic and has not revealed whether British surrogate mothers might be involved.

However, the German media has been more than sceptical about its chances of getting off the ground.

Previous attempts by Rieger to set up Nordic race farms have been disastrous.

In 1995, Rieger invested millions in a similar manor house and estate in western Sweden which was intended to house a "Germanic land collective for members of the Nordic-blonde race".

The project had to be abandoned because not enough willing Aryan families could be found.

The collective's attempts at fertilisation, although limited to farm animals, proved chaotic.

A breed of carefully nurtured Nordic pigs broke out of the grounds and devastated private gardens in the vicinity.