Why has it come to this conflict?

Hans Bernhard creates this mess because of frustration about the success of etoy after his own withdrawal from the group in summer 1998. etoy has no concrete insight into this motivation. Neither Hans Bernhard nor his partner Elisabeth Haas spoke to etoy.AGENTS since early 1999. In a letter and at the last informal meeting (1998/1999) Bernhard informed about his own plans with etxtreme.ru and uebermorgen.com. He wished etoy all the best for the future and considered his own ventures much more relevant, radical and interesting than old-school etoy that - in his eyes became lame after he left. This was the situation for about one and a half years. In the year 2000, just after TOYWAR became the biggest etoy.HIT ever and after large amounts of money were offered for he etoy.DOMAIN, first public provocations by Hans Bernhard started. In 2000, Bernhard's publication of a Nazi symbol in the name of etoy (etoy.HACKENKREUZ in a German exhibition ) lead to an etoy.VOTING in which 245 etoy.SHAREHOLDERS decided to declare Bernhard "Persona Non Grata" in January 2001. Since then, etoy suffered frequent attacks from Bernhard.

For etoy.FOUNDERS who knew Bernhard well, it is possible that all this plays a certain role. But at the same time we think it is obvious that the extreme greed for fame and attention as well as the ruthless MEDIA HACKING / SHOCKMARKETING strategy (that he documents on his website and describes in presentations around the globe) are the main force behind "legal art" against etoy. In the early days of etoy (1994-1998), discussions about simmilar issues led to many disputes between Bernhard and other etoy.FOUNDERS.