News / Religion
German multiculturalism and Xenophobia
22 May 2016 at 06:45hrs | Views
Nomazulu Thata is a political activist, an engineering metallurgist by profession, author of two books, a chemistry teacher and lecturer in her present occupation
Part 4. 1. 2. How West Germany fought Xenophobia and racial prejudices
Be it East Germany or West Germany, the economy of these countries was a disaster in the making when the war ended. About 20% of the entire housing was destroyed during war; food production fell by 52%. As a result of this, there was food rationing in all towns and rural areas of Germans. Half the population of the working class German men had died in the war. The West German economy was therefore half less of working force in their industries. Despite all these challenges, it turned out that after good 30 years, Germany rose to be a super economic giant in Europe and elsewhere. How did this wirschaftswunder (economic wonder) happen? This wirschaftswunder is also called the miracle on the Rheine.
West German was controlled by an allied military council called Allied Controlled Council abbreviated as ACC or just the ALLIES under the Potsdam conference agreement of December 1945. The ACC was composed of three countries: America, France and Great Britain. The aim of this Council was to neutralize Germany militarism. Their main objective was to lower German industrial potential whose heavy industry was mostly military and all the related companies that produced ammunitions for the military industry were dismantled. The ACC managed the destruction of the entire military ships, military aircraft and their manufacturing capability. The general industry itself was to be reduced to 50% production. For about two years after the WW2, there was no meaningful industrial research or innovation done in West German industries.
In as much as East German was looted by the Big Brother: the Soviet Union, West Germany's resources were plundered equally by the Allied Forces. It was not so much the looting of produced iron and steel of about 7 million tons taken away by ACC but also the dismantling of coal fields in Saarland that was given to France to extract coal for its own use. (They extracted coal in large quantities for their own use until 1981) Painfully still was the confiscation of intellectual property such as German patents, the ACC harvested all German technological- and science know-how and shared among them ACC group. To add more injuries to insults, top German scientists were relocated to USA to boost the American industry. Most industrial equipment in more than 706 manufacturing industries was either plundered or better still looted officially; the overall looting in currency could amount to US$10 billion dollars ( in 1945 – 48 US currency value) of movable and immovable assets!
West Germany, unlike East Germany, was a free democratic, with parliamentary system of governance whose economy was ordoliberalistic. According to German Academic Journal ordoliberalism means a third way between capitalism of Anglo-American and socialism of the Soviet Union, a Teutonic middle ground between laissez-faire on one hand and a fully-blown central economic planning of socialist states' economy. A closer and deeper definition of ordoliberalism means the government control in terms of establishing a strict order around which market can exist and flourish. It can also be seen as a degree of government involvement in the economy; that is boosting infrastructure development, monetary policy national defence standardization regulation and many other relevant aspects.
The Allies preferred and wanted a non-Nazi economic recovery whose reforms were based on "clean-up the mess" after the bitter defeat and humiliation of WW2. Ludwig Erhard was a German economist known for his anti-Nazi stand. He formulated an economic blue-print that highlighted how the post economy of West Germany was going to be revived. Soziale Marktwirschaft was introduced in 1948 after the war, the blue print that set the economic wonder of West German. That was followed by the implementation of Social Free Market Economy in 1958, like the one of Chicago School of economics that had heavy doses of free market, some government redistribution through tax system and anti-trust laws to prevent monopoly. Currency reforms were vital to introduce a new currency; Deutsch mark from Reich mark. The currency reform was going to be introduced in line with the amount of goods available in the market. Some substitute of smaller amount of new currency the Deutschmark ended inflation and price de-control would end depression too.
The other key to success of the West German economy was complimented by the Marshall Plan they received later together with other European countries affected by the WW2. This Marshall Plan named after the Secretary of State in President Truman's administration; George Marshall was also called European Recovery Plan, was meant to assist countries that were affected by war; UK being the largest recipient, West German got only 18% of the Marshall Plan.
It should be noted with great interest that if half the population of skilled men-folk perished in the war, there was a critical shortage of specialized and skilled labour in Germany. From the immovable modern stock of capital existing, only 6, 5% of the industrial tools were damaged by the war but high skilled force to revive the economy was not available. The influxes of refugees running away from communism, from the iron curtain, were mostly specialised and skilled manpower that West Germany desperately needed to revive the economy, they made use of them. They entered the labour market with their useful skills but some were considered on cheap labour basis. The first batch was 3 million refugees mostly from East Germany in the 1950s and followed by a further 3 million in the 1960s contributed immensely in the booming economy of West German, the economy grew rapidly and in a short space of time.
When the Berlin Wall was erected, the influx of refugees was reduced significantly of which West German was dependent on its labour in the economy. West German government had to rethink how it was going to fill in much in demand work force for their economy. The government of West Germany approached the government of Turkey for the purpose of acquiring labour for their labour market. It was Turkey that signed a formal labour agreement with West German, followed by Morocco in 1963, then Portugal in 1964, Tunisia in 1956 Yugoslavia in 1968. Some migrants came from Italy, Greece, Spain and many other countries in the south of Europe.
This migrant labour had one thing in common: the work permit was one year, never to integrate in the German population. The jobs they did were mostly factory jobs, manual jobs domestic jobs, construction jobs and many other blue-collar employments that were wholly temporal, one year contracts subject to extension at the discretion of the German Foreign Office. (Ausländeramt) The foreigners were needed in Germany as they continued to occupy those jobs that Germans did not want to do. For this reason the migrant labour laws changed from one-year-permit to five years also permitting the spouses of migrant workers to relocate to stay in Germany too, creating first and second generation of children of migrants with Federal German citizenship. Later these migrant workers, especially from Turkey were given permanent residency permits to remain in West Germany if they so wished. Currently the population of foreigners in Germany constitute 9% of the entire German population, which is 60 million.
The next question is; how much did the migrant workers contribute to the economic success of Germany? (Wirtschaftswunder) It is not simple to quantify the economic contribution of migrant labour in the German economy but their input was a valuable function in German's exponential economic growth. Most West German citizens do value the presence of migrant workers in their societies and they have learnt to live side by side with the Turkish population that is generally the largest minority foreigners in Germany. Which German citizen will want to part with a Turkish Donna kebab on Sunday afternoon?
However the problem of xenophobic nature in Germany came centre stage when Berlin Wall fell down and two German reunited to form one Federal Republic of Germany. There were movements of millions of migrant refugees seeking economic opportunities primarily in West Germany because Germany had liberal refugee laws. Most of them were ethnic Germans from the East, some were refugees fleeing the conflict in Yugoslavia, and some were from repressive regimes of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the aftermath of the wars from the Middle East. All these movements of citizens in transition knew one word: "Bahnhof" a German word for "Train-station."
West Germany under the leadership of Chancellor Helmut Kohl saw the coming back of 187,000 Russian-German whose parents settled in Russian before the Russian revolution of 1926. These German Aussiedlers were called "Blood Germans." Their integration in the German mainstream cost the country 3 billion Deutsch marks. Their entry into the German labour market triggered serious unemployment to about 10%. This move to bring back "Blood Germans" from the Soviet Union was wholly political, it benefited the politicians more than the German population and economic national budget who were then struggling put social security to normalcy, get those jobs, those blue-collar and menial jobs were then taken by East German population, Germans from the East, and foreigners who had for generations and permanently settled in Germany.
What really triggered a full blown Xenophobia in Germany is an instant binary complex of economic and political groundbreaking changes taking place at a very fast track after the re-unification of Germans. Most visible and critical issues were mass unemployment and the limited housing problems. Most East Germans were overnight subject to Social Security Benefits, a culture they were not used to. German Jews came to Russia and many other Eastern countries and settled at best in Germany and their presence was then visible. Anti-Semitism revisited Germany again; attacks against German Jews and others too from the Eastern countries especially Soviet Union became frequent. Jewish monuments and institutions became targets, whereby swastikas were chiselled into Jewish memorial places and their Jewish cemeteries were desecrated.
The influx of foreigners in Germany let to the rekindling of far-right political parties also called Neo-Nazis oriented political ideologies. Parties like National Democratic Party NDP existed since 1946 but had never had any significance in the German political landscape. NDP started to reorganise itself seriously when after the Berlin Wall. The reason was that they thought foreigners were taking away what belongs to them Germans. Germans found themselves competing for housing and jobs with foreigners. Similar sentiments led to the formation of German-Alterative Party that was found in 1979 and Deutsch-Rechts-Party, German-League-of-People-and-Homeland in 1991. In a nutshell almost all right-right-extremists parties in Germany had similar ideologies- hatred for foreigners in their country Germany and most of them were pressure groups of neo-Nazi ideology from the Eastern Germany the former East Germany or GDR in German DDR.
German, Federal Republic, after the WW2 had and still has a multi-party democracy system of governance the conventional political parties are Social democratic Party SPD, Christian Democratic Party CDU, The Left, The Green Party. However, the democratic privileges and rights to form parties were wholly abused by neo-Nazi oriented individuals that still glorify the Nazi past. They took advantage of newly found national pride, used hate speeches and sentiments from the general public discontentment against foreigners. The neo-Nazi Party called National Democratic Party NDP was successful in getting elected at Federal level after the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. It was successful in winning votes from the Saxony State in East Germany 9% and in Mecklenburg Vorpommern State 7.3% and these parties, despite the fact that they had neo-Nazi ideologies found itself in Federal Bundestag, was given a State representation.
The judiciary system of Federal Republic of Germany has strict and zero tolerance against Xenophobia in the country. Formation of such parties means that the portion of German population that are against the presence of foreigners in the countries would now resist foreigners through a legal framework rather than sporadic and isolated attacks that led to prosecution and imprisonment. The total number of potentially extreme-right individuals 31,000 and those potentially violent is 10,000 of them. Of the 25,000 right-wing extremists 5,600 were neo-Nazis.
Because neo-Nazis xenophobic activities are felt mostly from the Federal lands of former East Germany DDR or GDR than Western parts of Germany, foreigners are, still today not safe in eastern parts of Germany. About 15,905 crimes committed in 2010 were classified as far-right motivated crimes including acts of violence. German neo-Nazis attacked constantly accommodations for refugees; some of them are Hoyerswerda, Schwedt, Eberswalde, Eisenhüttenstadt, Elsterwerda, Rostock all of which are cities from the former GDR, East Germany. In West German lands, neo-Nazis were involved in the murder of Turkish girls in 1992 by arson attack in Mölln; again too, in 1993 an arson attack was done by neo-Nazis in Solingen. The German statistics show that the hate crimes that were reported in 1990 amounted to 849 cases. In 1992 were 1,485 and 17 people of which had been brutally murdered. In 2011 a report found that the 10 murders that occurred between 2000 and 2007 were done by groups from neo-Nazi groups. These neo-Nazi groups country-wide, every year since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, they hold demonstrations on the anniversary of the carpet bombing of Dresden, a city in the Eastern part of Germany. Indeed they try to make eastern part of Germany a "National Free Zone" which mean, clean zones from foreigners.
In the last essay that I shall write, I will conclude my findings but will include reasons why multi-culturalism in Germany is called a failure. There are lots of positives other nationalities can learn from the aspects their multiculturalism that worked well. When we say President Nyerere's Ujamaa was failure we still look into aspects of it that held the nation together after his death. It is similar with President Kenneth Kaunda's Humanism that has taken a twist in defining Ubuntu. Ubuntu has become the buzzword to express African socialism and hospitality.
I pen off for now
Ugogo omncane
Chirikadzi
Nomazulu Thata is a political activist, an engineering metallurgist by profession, author of two books, a chemistry teacher and lecturer in her present occupation. Her essays are purely personal and do not reflect any political party affiliation. She can be contacted on Nomazulu.thata(at)web.de
Be it East Germany or West Germany, the economy of these countries was a disaster in the making when the war ended. About 20% of the entire housing was destroyed during war; food production fell by 52%. As a result of this, there was food rationing in all towns and rural areas of Germans. Half the population of the working class German men had died in the war. The West German economy was therefore half less of working force in their industries. Despite all these challenges, it turned out that after good 30 years, Germany rose to be a super economic giant in Europe and elsewhere. How did this wirschaftswunder (economic wonder) happen? This wirschaftswunder is also called the miracle on the Rheine.
West German was controlled by an allied military council called Allied Controlled Council abbreviated as ACC or just the ALLIES under the Potsdam conference agreement of December 1945. The ACC was composed of three countries: America, France and Great Britain. The aim of this Council was to neutralize Germany militarism. Their main objective was to lower German industrial potential whose heavy industry was mostly military and all the related companies that produced ammunitions for the military industry were dismantled. The ACC managed the destruction of the entire military ships, military aircraft and their manufacturing capability. The general industry itself was to be reduced to 50% production. For about two years after the WW2, there was no meaningful industrial research or innovation done in West German industries.
In as much as East German was looted by the Big Brother: the Soviet Union, West Germany's resources were plundered equally by the Allied Forces. It was not so much the looting of produced iron and steel of about 7 million tons taken away by ACC but also the dismantling of coal fields in Saarland that was given to France to extract coal for its own use. (They extracted coal in large quantities for their own use until 1981) Painfully still was the confiscation of intellectual property such as German patents, the ACC harvested all German technological- and science know-how and shared among them ACC group. To add more injuries to insults, top German scientists were relocated to USA to boost the American industry. Most industrial equipment in more than 706 manufacturing industries was either plundered or better still looted officially; the overall looting in currency could amount to US$10 billion dollars ( in 1945 – 48 US currency value) of movable and immovable assets!
West Germany, unlike East Germany, was a free democratic, with parliamentary system of governance whose economy was ordoliberalistic. According to German Academic Journal ordoliberalism means a third way between capitalism of Anglo-American and socialism of the Soviet Union, a Teutonic middle ground between laissez-faire on one hand and a fully-blown central economic planning of socialist states' economy. A closer and deeper definition of ordoliberalism means the government control in terms of establishing a strict order around which market can exist and flourish. It can also be seen as a degree of government involvement in the economy; that is boosting infrastructure development, monetary policy national defence standardization regulation and many other relevant aspects.
The Allies preferred and wanted a non-Nazi economic recovery whose reforms were based on "clean-up the mess" after the bitter defeat and humiliation of WW2. Ludwig Erhard was a German economist known for his anti-Nazi stand. He formulated an economic blue-print that highlighted how the post economy of West Germany was going to be revived. Soziale Marktwirschaft was introduced in 1948 after the war, the blue print that set the economic wonder of West German. That was followed by the implementation of Social Free Market Economy in 1958, like the one of Chicago School of economics that had heavy doses of free market, some government redistribution through tax system and anti-trust laws to prevent monopoly. Currency reforms were vital to introduce a new currency; Deutsch mark from Reich mark. The currency reform was going to be introduced in line with the amount of goods available in the market. Some substitute of smaller amount of new currency the Deutschmark ended inflation and price de-control would end depression too.
The other key to success of the West German economy was complimented by the Marshall Plan they received later together with other European countries affected by the WW2. This Marshall Plan named after the Secretary of State in President Truman's administration; George Marshall was also called European Recovery Plan, was meant to assist countries that were affected by war; UK being the largest recipient, West German got only 18% of the Marshall Plan.
It should be noted with great interest that if half the population of skilled men-folk perished in the war, there was a critical shortage of specialized and skilled labour in Germany. From the immovable modern stock of capital existing, only 6, 5% of the industrial tools were damaged by the war but high skilled force to revive the economy was not available. The influxes of refugees running away from communism, from the iron curtain, were mostly specialised and skilled manpower that West Germany desperately needed to revive the economy, they made use of them. They entered the labour market with their useful skills but some were considered on cheap labour basis. The first batch was 3 million refugees mostly from East Germany in the 1950s and followed by a further 3 million in the 1960s contributed immensely in the booming economy of West German, the economy grew rapidly and in a short space of time.
When the Berlin Wall was erected, the influx of refugees was reduced significantly of which West German was dependent on its labour in the economy. West German government had to rethink how it was going to fill in much in demand work force for their economy. The government of West Germany approached the government of Turkey for the purpose of acquiring labour for their labour market. It was Turkey that signed a formal labour agreement with West German, followed by Morocco in 1963, then Portugal in 1964, Tunisia in 1956 Yugoslavia in 1968. Some migrants came from Italy, Greece, Spain and many other countries in the south of Europe.
This migrant labour had one thing in common: the work permit was one year, never to integrate in the German population. The jobs they did were mostly factory jobs, manual jobs domestic jobs, construction jobs and many other blue-collar employments that were wholly temporal, one year contracts subject to extension at the discretion of the German Foreign Office. (Ausländeramt) The foreigners were needed in Germany as they continued to occupy those jobs that Germans did not want to do. For this reason the migrant labour laws changed from one-year-permit to five years also permitting the spouses of migrant workers to relocate to stay in Germany too, creating first and second generation of children of migrants with Federal German citizenship. Later these migrant workers, especially from Turkey were given permanent residency permits to remain in West Germany if they so wished. Currently the population of foreigners in Germany constitute 9% of the entire German population, which is 60 million.
The next question is; how much did the migrant workers contribute to the economic success of Germany? (Wirtschaftswunder) It is not simple to quantify the economic contribution of migrant labour in the German economy but their input was a valuable function in German's exponential economic growth. Most West German citizens do value the presence of migrant workers in their societies and they have learnt to live side by side with the Turkish population that is generally the largest minority foreigners in Germany. Which German citizen will want to part with a Turkish Donna kebab on Sunday afternoon?
However the problem of xenophobic nature in Germany came centre stage when Berlin Wall fell down and two German reunited to form one Federal Republic of Germany. There were movements of millions of migrant refugees seeking economic opportunities primarily in West Germany because Germany had liberal refugee laws. Most of them were ethnic Germans from the East, some were refugees fleeing the conflict in Yugoslavia, and some were from repressive regimes of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the aftermath of the wars from the Middle East. All these movements of citizens in transition knew one word: "Bahnhof" a German word for "Train-station."
West Germany under the leadership of Chancellor Helmut Kohl saw the coming back of 187,000 Russian-German whose parents settled in Russian before the Russian revolution of 1926. These German Aussiedlers were called "Blood Germans." Their integration in the German mainstream cost the country 3 billion Deutsch marks. Their entry into the German labour market triggered serious unemployment to about 10%. This move to bring back "Blood Germans" from the Soviet Union was wholly political, it benefited the politicians more than the German population and economic national budget who were then struggling put social security to normalcy, get those jobs, those blue-collar and menial jobs were then taken by East German population, Germans from the East, and foreigners who had for generations and permanently settled in Germany.
What really triggered a full blown Xenophobia in Germany is an instant binary complex of economic and political groundbreaking changes taking place at a very fast track after the re-unification of Germans. Most visible and critical issues were mass unemployment and the limited housing problems. Most East Germans were overnight subject to Social Security Benefits, a culture they were not used to. German Jews came to Russia and many other Eastern countries and settled at best in Germany and their presence was then visible. Anti-Semitism revisited Germany again; attacks against German Jews and others too from the Eastern countries especially Soviet Union became frequent. Jewish monuments and institutions became targets, whereby swastikas were chiselled into Jewish memorial places and their Jewish cemeteries were desecrated.
The influx of foreigners in Germany let to the rekindling of far-right political parties also called Neo-Nazis oriented political ideologies. Parties like National Democratic Party NDP existed since 1946 but had never had any significance in the German political landscape. NDP started to reorganise itself seriously when after the Berlin Wall. The reason was that they thought foreigners were taking away what belongs to them Germans. Germans found themselves competing for housing and jobs with foreigners. Similar sentiments led to the formation of German-Alterative Party that was found in 1979 and Deutsch-Rechts-Party, German-League-of-People-and-Homeland in 1991. In a nutshell almost all right-right-extremists parties in Germany had similar ideologies- hatred for foreigners in their country Germany and most of them were pressure groups of neo-Nazi ideology from the Eastern Germany the former East Germany or GDR in German DDR.
German, Federal Republic, after the WW2 had and still has a multi-party democracy system of governance the conventional political parties are Social democratic Party SPD, Christian Democratic Party CDU, The Left, The Green Party. However, the democratic privileges and rights to form parties were wholly abused by neo-Nazi oriented individuals that still glorify the Nazi past. They took advantage of newly found national pride, used hate speeches and sentiments from the general public discontentment against foreigners. The neo-Nazi Party called National Democratic Party NDP was successful in getting elected at Federal level after the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. It was successful in winning votes from the Saxony State in East Germany 9% and in Mecklenburg Vorpommern State 7.3% and these parties, despite the fact that they had neo-Nazi ideologies found itself in Federal Bundestag, was given a State representation.
The judiciary system of Federal Republic of Germany has strict and zero tolerance against Xenophobia in the country. Formation of such parties means that the portion of German population that are against the presence of foreigners in the countries would now resist foreigners through a legal framework rather than sporadic and isolated attacks that led to prosecution and imprisonment. The total number of potentially extreme-right individuals 31,000 and those potentially violent is 10,000 of them. Of the 25,000 right-wing extremists 5,600 were neo-Nazis.
Because neo-Nazis xenophobic activities are felt mostly from the Federal lands of former East Germany DDR or GDR than Western parts of Germany, foreigners are, still today not safe in eastern parts of Germany. About 15,905 crimes committed in 2010 were classified as far-right motivated crimes including acts of violence. German neo-Nazis attacked constantly accommodations for refugees; some of them are Hoyerswerda, Schwedt, Eberswalde, Eisenhüttenstadt, Elsterwerda, Rostock all of which are cities from the former GDR, East Germany. In West German lands, neo-Nazis were involved in the murder of Turkish girls in 1992 by arson attack in Mölln; again too, in 1993 an arson attack was done by neo-Nazis in Solingen. The German statistics show that the hate crimes that were reported in 1990 amounted to 849 cases. In 1992 were 1,485 and 17 people of which had been brutally murdered. In 2011 a report found that the 10 murders that occurred between 2000 and 2007 were done by groups from neo-Nazi groups. These neo-Nazi groups country-wide, every year since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, they hold demonstrations on the anniversary of the carpet bombing of Dresden, a city in the Eastern part of Germany. Indeed they try to make eastern part of Germany a "National Free Zone" which mean, clean zones from foreigners.
In the last essay that I shall write, I will conclude my findings but will include reasons why multi-culturalism in Germany is called a failure. There are lots of positives other nationalities can learn from the aspects their multiculturalism that worked well. When we say President Nyerere's Ujamaa was failure we still look into aspects of it that held the nation together after his death. It is similar with President Kenneth Kaunda's Humanism that has taken a twist in defining Ubuntu. Ubuntu has become the buzzword to express African socialism and hospitality.
I pen off for now
Ugogo omncane
Chirikadzi
Nomazulu Thata is a political activist, an engineering metallurgist by profession, author of two books, a chemistry teacher and lecturer in her present occupation. Her essays are purely personal and do not reflect any political party affiliation. She can be contacted on Nomazulu.thata(at)web.de
Source - Nomazulu Thata
