Cloud Over Germany -- Frank Huebner Is Polite, Charismatic And Leader Of Gang Of Neo-Nazi Bullyboys

COTTBUS, Germany - Frank Huebner looks and talks like anyone's favorite grandson: He is well groomed, makes polite conversation easily and is solicitous for his wife and tiny baby. He drives a red BMW and enjoys a night at the pub with his mates.

Yet Huebner, 26, is anything but average. He leads a gang of around 500 neo-Nazi fanatics of the Deutsche Alternative party, and during their regular Wednesday pub night they plot their path to power.

Huebner's enemies say he has transformed the decrepit eastern German city of Cottbus into a personal fiefdom, whose armed bodyguards and skinhead bullyboys have cowed police, politicians and immigrants within a 100-mile radius.

While he outwardly pays homage to the ballot box, his opponents see him and the DA, one of the largest groups espousing national socialism, as a threat to democracy itself. Now Bonn is seeking to outlaw the party.

In a dusty, brightly lit back room of the Wassermann pub, the former bulldozer driver carefully explains the policies he believes will steer him to a place on the city council.

"The people here want order, cleanliness and justice. Women want jobs and a good education for their children. We will provide that," says Huebner, drumming his chubby fingers on the worn tablecloth. "The system is finished - we'll have to bring in a new one."

Always vague about doctrine - partly to skirt the constitutional ban on public support for Nazism - Huebner skillfully exploits gut emotions, just as Hitler did 60 years ago. While Chancellor Helmut Kohl has been encouraging the growth of popular fears over immigration, Huebner is reaping the harvest, pounding away with a vicious anti-foreigner message to a public that yearns for jobs and security.

The first test of Huebner's increasing popularity will be the region's council elections next year.

"We'll score at least 45 percent of the vote and that will be more than the PDS,' he predicts, referring to the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor to East Germany's Communist Party, which only three years ago was undisputed master of his stomping ground.

The charm and charisma of this neo-Nazi leader is in stark contrast to the standard German politician, colorless and dour. A relevant minority thinks he is a good guy. People in the east have never learnt the normal rituals of politicians; they see Huebner as a strong, forceful person. He shows he has power and that impresses.

A ban on the DA's activities, envisaged by German officials as part of a sudden crackdown on the far-right, holds no fears for Huebner. He claims that lawyers have already drawn up a defense and will easily win their case. The electoral officer has approved the DA, he notes.

Huebner excels at being the good husband and father. He is quick to tell you that his son has blue eyes. Their home is a small two-bedroom flat on a bleak housing estate on the edge of Cottbus. The entrance to his block is easily identifiable: "Huebner we'll get you," is scrawled on the wall in black paint. Huebner's struggle would warm his former mentor, Michael Kuehnen, Germany's best-known neo-Nazi.

When Huebner was expelled from East Germany in 1985 after being imprisoned for radical right-wing actions, Kuehnen personally took charge of the youngster's political education. Shortly after the Berlin Wall came down, Huebner was sent to Cottbus to set up a branch of Kuehnen's movement.

Now running his own party after the death of Kuehnen from AIDS in 1990, he has a full-time secretary who filters calls from admirers and foreign journalists.

"After the rash of attacks on asylum homes in Cottbus, Huebner gave an undertaking that it wouldn't happen again, and it hasn't. Now if I want to discuss law and order, I have to go straight to Huebner," says Wolfgang Bialas, head of law and order at Cottbus City Council.