Photo Gallery Golf Against the Far Right
Local actor Leo Kraus and African immigrant musician Amri Habimana play drums near the entrance of the Golf and Country Club Fleesensee, which hosted a tournament raising money to combat far-right extremism in the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Golfers at the event included Patrick Döring, general secretary of Germany's Free Democratic Party, pictured here in an orange t-shirt. Döring's party is the junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government.
One of the beneficiaries of the fundraising tournament is the ProVie Theater group. The organization conducts theater and music workshops in schools aimed at promoting multiculturalism. Each session can last up to five hours, said actor Kraus, who works for the group. "Children and youth in particular exposed to the problem of violence, xenophobia and right extremism," one of the organization's brochures reads.
The Golf and Country Club Fleesensee, where the tournament was held, is located in Germany's scenic lake country, a major magnet for tourists.
Officials at the tournament raised a total of 7,500 euros ($9,265), which will be given to two programs aimed at preventing xenophobic sentiment with the state's youth. Here, two students who volunteer for one of the organizations can be seen holding the check.
Golfers during the tournament: The organizations the money is going to are not just battling the far right. They are also promoting tolerance, said local Thomas Hartinger (right), who also golfed during Saturday's event.
Stork Heinar, the unofficial mascot of the region's anti-Nazi activities, is shown here at a recent anti-xenophibia rally in Pasewalk, where the far-right NPD held a major event on Aug. 11. The mascot also showed up at the golf tournament on Saturday.
In Pasewalk, protesters formed a human chain to protest the NPD event taking place in the town earlier this month.
Although Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is rarely the subject of international headlines these days, the spectre of Rostock is never far from people's minds. In 1992, the apartment complex here was the site of some of the worst xenophobic activity to take place in Germany since the end of World War II.
At the time, thousands of local residents cheered on as hooligans threw Molotov cocktails at a hostel for Roma and Vietnamese asylum seekers.
