This article is focused on the small circle of Guben and its structural and economic problems. We are interested in highlighting the special problems of Guben in its seemingly splendid isolation. In our opinion, there appears to be a special frontier issue when the exposed geographical position correlates with the common problem of right wing extremism. While the border grew to be an economic factor for the city (Guben profits financially from being a part of the Euroregion), it is important when examining this structurally weak region with its high unemployment rate to see how the city officials react to violence. It seems, that the aim of the city officials is not to establish a communication process between different political standpoints, which could be a democratic discussion of ideas, but to create a higher consensus of all political agitators, except the antifascists. All this in order to sustain peace in Guben only to preserve the benefit from the European Union. First of all, we will show the relevance and the actuality of the topic we deal with and the material our research is based on.

With the downfall of the GDR in 1989 a lot of things in the political, cultural and everyday life began to change in both parts of Germany. In our article we will focus on the growing racist violence of the young Germans in the former GDR after the reunification, especially in the frontier town Guben, which is located directly on the polish border, and divided from the Polish city Gubin only by the river Neisse. Since 1993, both cities formed the region "Spree-Neisse-Bober" under the patronage of the European Union.

Guben has 29000 inhabitants and a rate of unemployment of 27%. Until now the people in Guben could not profit from their geographical location. Some local representatives from Guben and Gubin pointed out, that their current neighbours are not as active as they are. The Polish assumed that the Germans do not have good ideas and the Germans assumed that the Polish have problems in logistic and economy, which as one interviewed person mentioned, was a question of mentality. Many Germans cross the frontier for shopping and filling up their cars with petrol, because it is much cheaper there than on the German side. Of course the local polish economy profits from this shopping tourism.

In the past few years there had been some aggressive attacks on people from Poland, as well as against young people, who are organised in an antifascist group in Guben. In fact racist violence has increased everywhere in Germany after the reunification, but most of the crimes of this kind were committed in the former GDR. The main questions that we asked ourselves with regard to the twin town situation of Guben and Gubin were:

Does the German-polish frontier play any role in the political attitudes of the juvenile right-wing extremists in Guben? Do the arguments and motives of these young people, mostly males, differ from right-wing extremists in other parts of Germany?

As we are pretty much at the beginning of our research work, we cannot present proven results of our research yet, but we can describe, what we have done up to now and how we plan to go on.

We started our research in Guben by observing the situation and have interviewed the major, the chief editor of the local newspaper, the co-ordinator of the European Union affairs, some pupils of the "Europaschule" (European School) and representatives of the local administration in Gubin on the polish side. Parts of the interviews were recorded on tape and the most striking parts were noted down. Moreover we contacted the social worker, head of those street- and social workers in Guben, who work especially with young people. This social worker invited us to a meeting, where young people, who are politically orientated to the right, as the social worker described it, and young antifascists, as they call themselves, were supposed to meet each other and to discuss how violent riots can be prevented in the future. The motto of this so-called "Round Table" meeting was "Talking instead of confrontation". The evaluation of the notes made at this meeting and statements of the social worker also serve as a basis for our first suppositions and hypothesises.

We assume that the list of prejudices of the juvenile citizens of Guben with xenophobic attitudes do not differ much from the one of people with similar attitudes living in other parts of Germany or Brandenburg, which is the county, where Guben is located in.

The results of this year German elections held in September show, that the voting of the Guben region is pretty close to the average election results of the whole Brandenburg: the Socialdemocratic Party of Germany (SPD) got 42% (44% in Brandenburg) of all votes, the Christdemocratic Union (CDU) got 22% (21% in Brandenburg) and the Party of Democratic Socialism got 21% (20% in Brandenburg). There is no significant difference in regions lying in the inner country and regions lying at the Polish-German frontier.

Still we assume that the frontier influences the Weltanschauung of the right wing-orientated youth. Since the polish part is likely to be the most active part of the Euroregion, and radiates optimism to become a member of the EU soon, many citizens of Guben seem to be envious of the polish success. This attitude proves itself in the comment of a German schoolgirl about 18 years old. She said, that the Polish tend to steal. When we asked her, if a Pole has ever stolen anything from her, she denied it and admitted that she did not know anybody, who had been robbed by a Pole. To attribute negative qualities to the polish neighbours might compensate for the missing self-confidence of some citizens of Guben.

Next we will describe the German reaction to the exploding racist violence at the beginning of the 90s until the present day and we will try to figure out the motives of Gubener's right-wing extremists and the environment in which such attitudes can grow considering German-Polish border.

Since we are quite at the beginning of our research, we cannot seriously answer the question whether the border makes a difference in defining the right and wrong.

In fact, the Polish are objects of prejudices of some Gubeners. It was obvious, that our respondents controlled themselves very much when interviewed. The statements towards the Polish neighbour were carefully made. Still not all of them could hide their clichés or prejudices regarding Poland. Two aspects were the most striking ones. On the one hand the fear of criminals from Poland committing crimes in Germany, on the other hand competition with the Polish on the labour market. For instance, the chief editor of the local newspaper did not only refer to common prejudices of Polish disorganisation, but also stressed that the Polish-German border is not comparable with other borders in Germany, too big was the difference between both sides. He said that one could not get in contact easily because the Germans were not understood in Poland. The frontier is in his words: "This is the end." We found the same attitude among most of the German pupils that we interviewed. They described Poland as a place to go for cheap shopping, but that had nothing more to offer, so that there was absolutely no other reason to go to Poland.

At the round table meeting it also seemed as if all participants were used to carefully think about what to say towards Poland. Just in little comments some clichés shined through. The policeman said that the good reputation of Guben is very important and that he knew, that a lot of crimes were committed by Polish people, but then he changed the subject and said that there would exist unpleasant foreigners everywhere. The nationalist opposition demands a visa duty for all the Polish wrote the nationalistic newspaper "Berlin Brandenburger Zeitung" in 1995. The same newspaper accused the Polish of working illegally, while many Germans were jobless. In another article of this newspaper Guben was described as a divided city, half occupied by the Poles. Moreover it is written, that most criminals come from the polish part of Guben, the so-called Gubin. It gets obvious, that the writer does not accept the frontier between Poland and Germany along the river Oder and Neisse.

As the first result of our research we can say that there is an existing lack of democracy not only among the right-orientated youth, but also among some of the officials in Guben. For this we give several reasons. We noticed that some officials at the round table meeting were not interested in the real problems of the youth. A social democrat, which works in the youth apartment, asked the young people to speak frankly about their problems. "Then we'll choose what problems you really have," - he said. There it seems obvious that this meeting did not take place to treat the youth problems seriously. This proves the common nature of right wing violence and the emphasis on the reputation of Guben. Moreover, in the official Protocol of the round table there were used some expressions that belong to the lexicon of the nationalistic discourse. For example, the word "Asylbetraeger", which means, that most people, who ask for asylum, just want to benefit from the social system in Germany and are betraying with regard to their flight motives. When the meeting was over, we went together with the social worker, his girl friend and a young man of right-orientation in the social workers office. The social worker did not intervene when the young man called left-orientated youth "ticks", which are little blood sucking insects, and when he was telling heroic stories of the famous Nazis Wendt and Schwedt. The most striking example of a lack of democratic orientation is that the major of Guben met one of the mentioned nazi cadres. It is not common for a democrat to meet with right wing extremists.

When the young antifascists were asked about the reason for a demonstration that recently took place, they referred to the existing and growing organisation of right parties and structures against which nobody reacts. But the problems like that were discussed at the round table talks and it appeared as if the conflicts were not based on different positions and convictions, but just existed as a problem of a disorientated youth without perspectives. One of the social workers mentioned that "right and left will always exist and that's all right like this". The conflict between right and left was simplified to the level of a youth problem, that could maybe be solved by installing more youth centres. What we have noticed generally was the tendency to deny the political significance of these conflicts and to ignore possible consequences of them. Thus it follows, that all the participating parties can establish themselves as a unit, that stands up against the mislead youth. So they can regard themselves as acting democratically. We assume that, if the officials were to enter into the political debate, it would be obvious that the roots of the right wing orientation can be found also among their positions.

In comparison with other regions of Brandenburg the rate of xenophobic motivated crimes in Guben is not unusually high. This kind of crimes occurred in more than a third of all districts of Brandenburg since the downfall of the GDR (Wagner, 1998). In Guben, for example, in November 1991, a crime of arson was committed against a refugees" home in construction. And such attitudes did not appear with the opening of the border. They existed before, during the socialist period (when in Guben worked people from Mozambique and Vietnam, for example, some attacks took place as well). Almost everywhere in the former GDR a lot of young people tend to have nationalist and racist attitudes. In many youth centres the dominant youth culture is right. Guben is nothing special so far.

What we considered to be special for Guben is the desire to screen Guben off from the outside world by the juvenile right wing extremists and by many officials of the local administration. The journalist Burkhard Schroeder described a situation in May 1991 when the local soccer club played against a soccer club from Berlin (Schroeder, 1992). This soccer club from Berlin is well known for having many right hooligans among their fans. The chief of the right wing extremist organisation "Gubener Heimatfront", sometimes also called "Gubener Hitler-Jugend" mobilised his followers in order not to let the hooligans from Berlin disturb Guben. The Gubener Heimatfront defended their town even against those, who shared their right attitude, but came from another town.

In the round table discussion we could observe a similar attitude. The reputation of Guben was an important matter to those who were present. A certain local patriotism was quite distinctive among all groups. This became obvious, when the policeman said, that violent riots should be prevented, because the national and international public has an eye on the German behaviour in relation to the foreigners in Guben, because of its special location at the border. He also said, that he accepted all attitudes, but not criminal offence. The desire for a calm, peaceful city stood behind this attitude. One of the social workers argued that Guben was in a difficult position anyway and that negative headlines would scare off potential investors. Antifascists and neo-nazis can fight in other cities, however he did not care about Nazis like Christian Wendt, who was active in Guben. Wendt can fight in his own city, but not in Guben. Gubeners should settle down Guben affairs. With an angry voice, he accused both sides, the right and the left, of having asked for help in other cities in order to win the riots. He said, that so - called "Hammerskins" (an extremely racist and violent group of skinheads) and other nazi skins were just waiting for a sign from the Gubener right wing extremists to attack Guben. He stressed that everything was fine, which in his sense meant calm, when the antifascists were passive. We found these statements very astonishing, because it seemed as if a non-political behaviour was rewarded in spite of encouraging political participation and criticism. This social worker seemed to see himself more as a representative of Guben, than as an advocate of his clients. And with other local representatives he emphasised, that all evil came from outside of Guben with the aim to incite the Guben youth to violence. A few weeks before this meeting this social worker accused the Ministry of Interior of Brandenburg in having an interest in xenophobic incident in Guben. It seemed almost like a conspiracy against the city.