Biberbrunnen Beverstedt

The beaver fountainIn the Lower Saxony municipality of Beverstedt, young people regularly gathered at the landmark, the beaver fountain, in the early 1990s. They drank, rioted and with their willingness to use violence terrified the village. “They were called› the Rightists ‹or› the neo-Nazis ‹, you looked at it, you looked away,” was how a journalist described the reactions of the people from Beverstedt. In the course of the 90s, a group of 40-50 men grew out of the rampaging young people, consisting on the one hand of hard-drinking, violent fellow travelers and on the other hand of ideologically stable ringleaders with links to the radical right-wing party scene. At the height of the violence, a six-page report in the Spiegel marked the turning point: After a nationwide wave of press that identified Beverstedt as a “brown spot” in West Germany, an innovative model project was started. In association with youth care, schools, police, courts and associations, the small community made everything politically possible. With visible success: The Biberbrunnen has been pacified since the early 2000s - but have the right thoughts also disappeared with the violence?