Societal Context
In the early 1990s after German reunification, the topic of foreigners, and especially of asylum seekers, was hotly debated in Germany. The CDU party and the tabloid newspaper Bild Zeitung were main forces calling for limiting their numbers.
Several instances of anti-foreigner violence preceded the Solingen attack. In December 1988, a German ultra right militant named Josef Seller set fire to the "Habermeier Haus" building in Schwandorf, Bavaria killing the Turkish couple Fatma and Osman Can, together with their son Mehmet; the arson attack also took the life of German citizen Jürgen Hübner. In September 1991, violent disturbances in Hoyerswerda forced the evacuation of an asylum seeker's hostel. During the three-day riot of Rostock-Lichtenhagen in August 1992, several thousand people surrounded a high-rise building and watched approvingly while militants threw Molotov cocktails; the Vietnamese inhabitants barely managed to survive by fleeing to the roof. In November 1992, an arson in Mölln perpetrated by right-wing youth killed three Turks.
In December 1992, large demonstrations against xenophobia took place all over Germany, with over 700,000 participants. Several Neo-Nazi groups were outlawed by the end of 1992.
Three days before the attack, on May 26, 1993, the German Bundestag, by the required 2/3 majority, resolved to change the German constitution (the Grundgesetz) to limit the numbers of asylum seekers. Previously, the constitution had granted every political refugee in the world a direct right to refugee status in Germany.
The Solingen attack, with five people killed, was at that time the most severe case of anti-foreigner violence in Germany. One week later, an arson attack on a house in Frankfurt with 34 foreigners was detected early and nobody died. A case of arson in an asylum seeker's hostel in Lübeck in 1996 in which 10 people died was never solved. A total of 135 foreigners have died in Germany to date as a result of similar xenophobic violence.
Read more about this topic: Solingen Arson Attack Of 1993
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