Hartmut Heller

Hartmut Heller (died 5 June 2003) was a German indigenous rights and anarcho-primitivist activist. He was the founder and first chairman of the Friends of People Close to Nature (fPcN, , FdN) until his death in 2003.

Life Heller was from Lauenburg and worked as a nuclear physicist at the GKSS research facility in Geesthacht. Heller claimed that the research facility was home to a reactor, separate from the one in Krümmel, at which an explosion had occurred in 1986 which caused the emission of radiation that lead to an increase in leukemia cases in the area. He claimed that this accident was covered up and that he was given free rein at work in exchange for not speaking about the occurrence publicly.

Heller died on 5 June 2003 in a German hospital, having been severely sick with "multiple tropical illnesses" and Malaria. He was buried in the cemetery of Lauenburg. He reportedly experienced at the DED that development aid did not always have a positive impact on indigenous peoples and their cultures. Heller additionally worked on the documentary Hadzabe – Kein Bedarf nach Entwicklung, which was published in 2012, after Heller's death.

Heller was especially interested in raising awareness for the Negrito peoples of southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines. "polygamous and without clothes or money". Like other anarcho-primitivists, Heller opposed civilization, and in particular its introduction to indigenous peoples; but recognized that he himself had to use its means in order to advance his goals.

Commenting on values and morality, Heller said he had made an effort to remove himself from the western perception thereof and the society he had grown up in. Instead, he said, one "has to choose one or the other, the values of the industrialized world, or those of the naturalistic peoples." as they could not be combined. He criticized that naturalistic humans around the world are "brutalized" under a "european-occidental system" that takes humans their freedom to live in accordance with nature.

According to a recounted conversation in which Heller was jokingly confronted: "Hartmut, when I hear you talking like this, I sometimes start to think you would like to just bomb humanity back to the stone age.", to which he was quoted as having replied:"Yes, that's exactly what I want. That's exactly what it's all about! Our civilization is already dead; it is built only on money and oppression. There's nothing alive about it anymore. We have to go back to the life of the savages." In 2001, Heller traveled to Cambodia for research on the ancient Negrito peoples of the area but shifted the focus of his trip due to the regions being inaccessible because of the remaining landmines. The new focus of his trip was thus shifted to educating himself about the former Khmer Rouge, which he concluded by sympathizing with the regime, saying: "Pol Pot and the red Khmer had visions and goals very similar to mine. [...]"; going on to elaborate that he saw in the Khmer Rouge a regime which sought to return to a society free from oppression, money, and industry. He praised, in a 7-point-list, supposed achievements of the Khmer Rouge which he viewed as positive, those being the following: