Journalist Robert Andreasch has won Munich’s prestigious Publizistikpreis for his outstanding work on Germany’s far-right scene.

With work published across the country, the jury praised Andreasch for his in-depth research, notably in Bavaria. Unsurprisingly, those in the neo-Nazi scene see him as an enemy, as do the AfD, whose events he is banned from attending because of his work.

The 45-year-old attended many of the 438 days of the NSU trial, reports a local media organisation Bayerischer Rundfunk (Ger), and he has been targeted by extremists on several occasions. He told BR:

As a journalist, you are a real enemy. The extreme right, which is hallucinating about the downfall of the West or the German Volksgemeinschaft, blames us journalists. This causes an incomprehensible hatred - and this hatred causes an incomprehensible aggressiveness.

On the award, the official Munich city website (Ger) noted:

In the last 20 years, hardly any other journalist has visited Munich as often [as Andreasch] … when right-wing extremists met, whether in public or in situations and places where they wanted to remain … unnoticed. Andreasch has been repeatedly threatened and physically attacked. His pseudonym of Robert Andreasch offered him protection in his private life for only a few years. When in 2004 neo-Nazis found out his real name, Tobias Bezler, during a complaint against him, he has constantly been the target of slander and slander campaigns, especially on the websites and forums of the right-wing extremist scene.

My congratulations to Robert Andreasch for his brave and necessary work. There can hardly have been a more deserving winner of this Munich journalism prize.