Plans to turn the bungalow of top Nazi Joseph Göbbels into a yoga retreat scrapped after the project was infiltrated by the far-right
- Plans to turn Joseph Göbbels' former house into a yoga and artists' retreat have been scrapped.
- One of the members working on the project was found to have had ties to far-right groups.
- The bungalow was supposed to be turned into an environmental village for artists.
A plan to turn a bungalow owned by Hitler's henchman Joseph Göbbels into an artist and yoga retreat has been scrapped after it emerged that a team member behind the project had links to far-right groups.
The proposal for the project issued earlier this year by the LKC Bogensee initiative included turning the former country retreat of Hitler's propaganda chief into an environmentally friendly village complete with yoga studios and workshops for artisans.
The villa, which has a private cinema, a bunker, and former SS barracks, is located in a forest next to the Bogensee, a lake north of Berlin.
But officials rejected the proposal after it came out that one of the founding members of the initiative, Dirk Schneider, had links to the far-right Reich Citizen's movement or Reichsbürgerbewegung.
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The Reich Citizen movement rejects the legitimacy of the modern German state and is often connected to far-right and antisemitic positions. It has an estimated 19,000 members across the country.
In an email to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, Schneider wrote that he supports "the Kingdom of Germany in the search and development of real estate."
The LKC Bogensee initiative has claimed on its website that it wasn't aware of Schneider's connections.
"These people have been secretly working towards the goal of bringing the Bogensee area under the control of the KRD, taking advantage of our ideas, our power, and our commitment," LKC Bogensee initiative said on its website, according to The Times. "We expressly distance ourselves from the KRD, Reichsbürger, anti-COVID campaigners, and all anti-democratic groups and views."
German authorities have previously said that buildings linked to prominent Nazi figures should be torn down to keep away neo-Nazis and keep down maintenance costs.
Last year, Austrian authorities announced they would be turning Hitler's birthplace into a police station.