At the municipal office in Berlin's Mitte district, it's hard to find out exactly which bureaucrat is responsible for Gustav Rust. Perhaps it's the Parks and Gardens Department, because Rust sets up his stall on a path belonging to the Tiergarten, the city's large central park? Maybe the Trade Office, because he sells his books on a Berlin sidewalk? Or could it be the Office of Public Order, because he occasionally assaults people walking by?

What is clear, though, is that the file on Gustav Rust sitting in the district office is extremely thick. It includes altercations with police, complaints from the president of the German parliament and even entanglements with foreign diplomats.

Gustav Rust, 67, is a former East German prisoner who has devoted himself to publicly paying tribute to the victims of the communist regime. Any tourist who walks from the Brandenburg Gate to the German parliament building, the Reichstag, can't help but go past him: He's the tall, lanky guy with the angular skull, prominent holes between his teeth and a pair of handcuffs dangling from his left wrist.

He stands in front of his home-made memorial: a row of white crosses attached to a fence memorializing victims of the communist East German regime. Rust sat in a GDR prison for several years, and he is determined to make sure that the injustices he suffered do not go forgotten.

No one has any problem with a former GDR prisoner denouncing the crimes of the Stasi and the Socialist Unity Party (SED), the ruling party of the former communist East Germany. But many people feel that Rust is aggressive and disturbed.

He is always putting up new flyers on the fence in the spaces between the crosses. One accuses German Chancellor Angela Merkel of being a "Free German Youth activist," referring to the communist youth organization in the former East Germany, which the young Merkel did in fact belong to.

Another sign warns of the "PDS Band of Murderers," referring to the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor party to the East German SED, which has now become part of Germany's far-left Left Party. Yet another notice claims that the communist terror in East Germany did not begin on Aug. 13, 1961, the day the Berlin Wall went up, "but rather, in 1944, when the Russian-Asiatic hordes" raped young girls in eastern Prussia.

"Asiatic hordes?" It's an expression that was used by the Nazis. That's no coincidence: On his Web site, Rust also promotes a book by the late Franz Schönhuber, founder of the far-right German party the Republicans. Rust himself writes: "Don't be afraid to hold your heads up high, just because you were German soldiers!"

Links on Rust's homepage lead directly to that of the far-right extremist and Holocaust denier Horst Mahler as well as to a page dedicated to Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party who is venerated by the current generation of neo-Nazis (more...). Rust admits he is "a National Socialist -- but without the gas chambers."

Questionable Company

It would be wrong to say that Rust's problematic positions have gone unnoticed. Polish diplomats in Berlin filed a complaint after he got into an argument with a Polish military attaché. Members of the German parliament have called upon the parliament's president to take action against the protestor -- because, after all, the image of the parliament is at stake. Even Germany's Cultural Minister Bernd Neumann, who is responsible for public memorials in Germany, thinks that Rust's private tribute is awful.

Rust is not, however, a lone warrior. He has, in fact, close connections to the Association of the Victims of Stalinism (VOS), an organization which represents victims of political repression, mainly in East Germany -- and which also has its share of right-wing adherents.

In 2006, Bernd Stichler, the then head of the VOS, had to resign after it was revealed he had referred to Jews and Muslims as "occupying forces." Nevertheless, Stichler did make a fine distinction: "If a Jew stands next to you, he doesn't stink. But a dirty Turk in the subway stinks." Stichler's speech was caught on tape, but he refuses to discuss the incident with the press any more.

The current deputy head of the VOS, Hugo Diederich, who also happens to sit on the board of the German public television station ZDF, has in the part granted interviews to Junge Freiheit, a weekly far-right German newspaper.

The real problem with Rust, however, is not his ties to the VOS but his relation with the German authorities. The question of who is actually responsible for the lone protestor on the sidewalk is incredibly complicated. It's not the federal government's business, nor the Bundestag president's. Not even the Berlin Senate is responsible for him.

It turns out that only the Office of Public Order in the Berlin district of Mitte -- where Rust's patch of sidewalk is located -- is responsible for determining how long someone can make a nuisance of himself in one of Germany's most politically symbolic locations. Officials have removed Rust's memorial twice. Both times, he just went back and rebuilt it.

According to one of its officials, the staff of Mitte's Office of Public Order prefer to give Rust and his memorial a wide berth these days -- they are all very familiar with his criminal record.

Back in 2004, for example, Rust was convicted of assault and battery. On Nov. 6, 2007, Rust was given a four-month suspended sentence, again for aggravated battery. According to the judge's verdict, Rust had punched a man in the face, "resulting in the man suffering pain in the left jaw region and the temporomandibular joint."

In support of the defendant, however, it was assumed that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his time in the GDR prison, and was therefore not capable of evaluating his actions. Rust puts it much more simply: In his words, prison made him "a bit odd."

And so -- at least until his next outburst -- Rust will remain outside, looking after his memorial. He might not be much of an advertisement for Germany, but he's a good example of how the country functions. According to one man from the Mitte district office, people hope that at some point Rust will no longer just get off with probation.