The fashion brand “Thor Steinar” is known to be popular within the right-wing extremist scene. Almost all Nazi mail order companies have the brand in stock. Furthermore, Thor Steinar has retail stores to strategically increase their visibility. Once a store is closed down, it will reopen in another part of the city; thus an effect of normalization occurs which familiarizes a society slowly but vehemently with an increasing presence of right-wing extremist symbols and codes.
When in 2008 the first “Thor Steinar” retail store at the Berliner Carré mall had to close down, a new one was opened only a few hundred meters away on Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße. After two years in business, it closed in October 2010. Only a year later, yet another store was opened on Berliner Allee in the district of Pankow-Weißensee, which is in business until this day. In February 2009, another branch opened in the district of Friedrichshain, on Petersburger Straße. This store was closed down in September 2013.
Thanks to many concerned citizens, initiatives and collaboration of store owners and artists, supported by the counseling services of the Mobile Counsel against Right-wing Extremism Berlin (MBR), it was possible to set up manifestations, events, and round table discussions. Another great achievement was the design of a container by artists to raise awareness, which was placed in the parking lot in front of the store on Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße. In the district of Weißensee, a container commonly used to deposit used clothes for charity was put up on Antonplatz, with a colorful information panel next to it that here it was possible to dispose of so-called problematic clothes. Thus leaving no doubt where to properly put “Thor Steinar” outfits.
The container was put in place by the initiative “Weißensee gegen Rechts” together with the district’s mayor, Matthias Köhne.