Four murders in eight weeks and a bomb attack on a Dusseldorf commuter railway station which injured nine immigrants, five of them Jewish, have propelled the menace of right-wing violence to the top of Germany's political agenda this summer.
As each day brings new attacks on foreigners, Germany's politicians and opinion-formers are struggling for an answer to the problem. The police admit the problem is out of control and business leaders say the situation is scaring off much-needed foreign investors.
When he returns from holiday in Spain later this month, the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, will tour his country's five eastern states in an attempt to persuade his fellow citizens to stand up to right-wing violence. The Chancellor's wife, Doris, is among a group of celebrities, politicians and civil rights activists who have launched an initiative with the same purpose, called "Show Your Face".
As politicians squabble over whether to ban the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), some companies are threatening to sack any employee who is a rightwing extremist, a questionable proposition in view of Germany's worker-friendly labour laws.
The Interior Minister wants to deploy border police, usually used for riot duty, to protect eastern railway stations and town centres where skinheads congregate and the police want a national database of right-wing extremists.
Although some of the more spectacular attacks on Germany's seven million foreign residents have taken place in the west, the problem of right-wing violence is overwhelmingly an eastern one. A foreigner is 26 times more likely to be attacked in the east despite the fact that the immigrant population there is much lower than in the west.
Skinhead gangs, organised in small, autonomous groups known as freie Kameradschaften, have declared entire eastern towns "nationally-liberated zones", no-go areas for foreigners where police cannot guarantee anyone's safety. Although dark-skinned foreigners are the main targets, skinheads also attack left-wing people, the homeless, the disabled and gays. In one eastern region, social workers have reported attacks on single mothers, who were told they should establish "a proper German family".
Left-wing people point out bitterly that when the leftist Red Army Faction emerged as a threat in the 1970s the state's response was swift and brutal, unlike today's dithering over right-wing violence. During its 20-year campaign, the Red Army Faction murdered 33 people; more than 100 people have been killed by right-wing extremists during the past 10 years.
The Interior Ministry admitted this week that, although police questioned more than 800 suspects about 760 right-wing attacks in the first half of this year, only 31 people have been charged. A more substantial police presence would undoubtedly make foreigners, many of whom are afraid to go out at night, feel safer.
Yet the phenomenon of rightwing violence cannot be viewed as a law and order problem alone. Easterners are twice as likely to be out of work than westerners and Germany's economic recovery has yet to make an impact east of the river Elbe. However, investigators insist that right-wing extremism is not primarily a problem of deprivation, pointing out that only one-fifth of those involved are unemployed, a figure close to the regional average.
Opinion surveys show that young easterners are much more xenophobic than their western counterparts and a recent study of 1,600 15-year-olds in the Baltic port city of Rostock found that 40 per cent blamed foreigners for unemployment.
Some observers blame the authoritarian legacy of 40 years of communism for eastern intolerance but a growing number of Germans believe that attitudes throughout society must change before rightwing violence can be tackled.
Although foreigners account for almost 9 per cent of Germany's population, most German politicians continue to repeat the fiction that Germany is not a country of immigration. Out of more than 600 members of the Bundestag, only two are from ethnic minorities, and there are no black or Turkish newsreaders or presenters on the main television channels.
For most Germans, the idea of living in a multicultural society is anathema, but in reality Germany has been multicultural for more than 30 years. Young people, in the west at least, are becoming more relaxed about ethnic diversity, but their parents are still unwilling to accept that Germany's 7 million foreigners are there to stay.
When Mr Schroder's government attempted to change the citizenship law to allow the German-born children of foreigners to have the same rights as their ethnically German neighbours, the opposition Christian Democrats collected millions of signatures against the proposal. Mr Schroder eventually succeeded in enacting a watered-down version of the citizenship Bill.
When he unveiled a plan to issue green card visas to thousands of foreign computer experts, many of them from the Indian sub-continent, he met further opposition. Christian Democrats in Germany's most populous state campaigned against the plan under the slogan "Kinder statt Inder" (Children instead of Indians) and called for more investment in education instead.
Business leaders acknowledge the need to attract highly-skilled foreigners and are worried about the potential impact of right-wing violence on direct foreign investment. However, Mr Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a former minister for multicultural affairs in Frankfurt's city government who now sits in the European Parliament for the French Greens, warns that distinguishing between welcome and unwelcome foreigners could fuel racism.
"Sartre said that anti-Semitism only disappears when you accept Jews for what they are - gangsters, intellectuals, poor and rich, nurses and whores. But if you say we need Jews because they are all Nobel Prize winners it's fatal. It's the same with immigrants," he said.
The current debate over rightwing violence has created unprecedented political alliances in Germany, uniting left-wing Greens and Bavarian conservatives in a determination to tackle the problem. However, Mr Cohn-Bendit maintains that, if they want to deal with the roots of xenophobia, politicians must take the lead in changing the way Germans think about their society. "They must stage events together in Hoyerswerda, in NorthRhine Westphalia and in Bavaria and deliver a single message: Germany has immigration, Germany needs immigration, Germany will have immigration."