Racism in Europe - Germany

Germany

In the nineteenth century, Germany became one of the major centers of nationalist thought, with the Völkisch movement, and also a major area for development of race-biology, many of these theories virulently racist See above. Anti-Semitic campaigns in this period took on a definitely "racial" valence, as definitely distinct from a religious one.

The period after losing World War I led to an increased use of Anti-Semitism and other racism in political discourse, for example among the right-wing Freikorps, emotions that finally culminated in the ascent of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in 1933. The Nazi racial policy and the Nuremberg Laws against Jews represented the most explicit racist policies in Europe in the twentieth century. During later phases of the Second World War, the Nazis began their genocide: the Holocaust, a systematic murdering of six million Jews, Romani people, homosexuals (see homophobia), disabled people and other "undesirables". On the Eastern Front, the Nazi SS soldiers also had orders to shoot all Soviet prisoners of war who had "Mongolian features."

In the post-World War II era, German reconciliation with its Anti-Semitic past has been a painful experience. A depleted population of young males during WWII and the German economic miracle showed that a recovering economy needed more factory laborers, the West German government recruited immigrants from mainly Turkey in the second half of the 20th century. Recent concerns about racism have centered around immigrants (Ausländer), who encounter prejudice when seeking jobs and apartments, or can even experience direct violent attacks by some right-wing groups. This pattern is similar to what is happening in some other European countries.

The immigrants came in two waves. The first wave of immigrants came in the early 1950s, the so-called Gastarbeiter (Guest Workers). They were almost exclusively requested and welcomed by the German government and companies as work-force increase to the growing and booming economy. These well trained working people were literally exchanged by their native countries for economical incentives and came mainly from countries such as Turkey, Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia to West Germany; and Vietnam, Mongolia, Angola and Mozambique to East Germany. Initially, the Gastarbeiter were expected to remain on limited contracts or work-permissions, and then eventually leave. Many of these contracts were extendent and family reunions were granted resulting in children born and raised in Germany. These second generation "Gastarbeiters" were now granted different rights (the right to live indefinitely in Germany – Aufenthaltsberechtigung) from their parents permission to reside for a limited, but for indefinitely extendible time (Arbeitserlaubnis). Problems of integration arose when these second and third generation "Gastarbeiter" remained citizens of other countries in which these generations had never lived and were increasingly culturally, socially and economically alienated.

Starting from the 1980s, the second wave of immigrants into Germany were the Asylbewerber (Asylum Seekers) from war torn and conflicted areas such as Iraq, Morocco, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Argentina and Lebanon among others. Germany was not prepared and in denial of being a land of migration since at least the 1960s when the first children were being born to Gastarbeiter. By the 2000s, an estimated 3 to 5 million Turks lived in Germany, concentrated in Kreuzberg, Berlin and inner-cities or industrial urban areas in the western regions.

Despite the 1950s immigrants of European origin adapting to German culture, it proved to be a different case for Turks and other non-Europeans who held on a cultural identity held to be "exotic" and "alien" by some Germans from that of their own. A failed integration of the first generation and failed German planning assisted in a general sense of not-belonging and the development of ghetto neighborhoods, creating and enabling racism.

In November 2010, Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly remarked that multiculturalism in Germany has failed. Many Germans criticized her bold move to break a previously held post-WWII taboo on even peacefully expressing an opposition to multiculturalism in a racially diverse Germany, where a fifth (18–19%) of Germans in 2010 are foreign-born. More conservatives are openly questioning the tolerance of immigrants and their behavior.