This is written especially for people from outside Germany: This isn’t the Germany I know.
In the Germany I know, people don’t go chasing dark-skinned people through the streets in a raging mob and beat the crap out of them yelling “Foreigners Out!”
In the Germany I know, people are on the lookout for racists. They’re looked down upon. They’re a reminder of darker times I don’t even need to mention, they’re so notorious.
I remember once on a packed commuter train some 15-year-old kid was playing music from his cellphone for his 12-year-old friend. I couldn’t make out the lyrics because they were raspy and garbled, but a woman stood up and said in a voice which rang out clear across the car: TURN THAT NAZI SHIT OFF or I will march you out of the car at the next station and have the police lay charges on you!
But those aren’t the kind of stories which make headlines.
Sitting here in cosmopolitan Hamburg where tens of thousands of Turks, Africans, Asians, and even the odd Canadian live peacefully alongside the majority German population, it’s easy to roll your eyes and think, “those damn neo-nazis in the east again. So hopeless.” Because although the proportion of foreigners there is lower than in the west, it always seems to be the states of the former East Germany where this shit comes from.
But no matter how much I say that, no matter how often I tell people that Germans don’t deserve a blanket reputation of being unfriendly toward foreigners, it will always come off as an apology full of lame excuses.
It’s all the unemployment over there. They think foreigners are taking German jobs.
It’s because they grew up under a dictatorship; they don’t know what democracy means.
They’re lost and looking for something to belong to, anything.
Then I wonder if I’m living in some sort of bubble, that I don’t feel racism because I blend in with the majority, that if I were to slip into the skin of an Arab and walk around Hamburg, I’d have a completely different story to tell. Maybe not of being chased by a mob and beaten up, but of a daily grind from subtle put-downs to outright rejections.
Beyond the intial shock and disgust at this weekend’s attack itself, it’s disorienting and upsetting to find yourself confronted with this.
Do I really know this place? Can we afford to be smug and say it’s only in the east?
This would seem like a classic motherhood issue: racism is bad. Racist attacks are horrible. We have to stop racism.
But it keeps happening.
© 2007 lettershometoyou
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wasn’t that unbelievable? when i saw it on tv and heard the mayor claim there’s supposed to be no far-right scene in his town i nearly choked on my iced tea.
on the news they said those youths battered the pizzeria doors for about 45 minutes. two of them were taken in by the police, then released later. how is that possible? they don’t have enough officers to split up a group of neonazis and take them all to headquarters? it can’t be that they didn’t have enough time to arrive on the scene before the guys were gone. i found this whole episode hard to understand.
i think the biggest problem is that it’s not taken seriously enough.
and it’s not just in the east. in cologne the discussion about the building of the new mosque seems to have opened the doors for far-right speakers who can now voice opinions they would under other circumstances have been called nazis for.
there are about 100.000 muslims in cologne. any idea why they shouldn’t have a mosque that allows room for 2.000? in other numbers: 40% of cologne’s population are catholic, and the place is literally littered with catholic churches, among them one of the biggest and most famous cathedrals. then there are about 10% muslims. they have to meet in little backyard mosques, and the one this new mosque is to replace is an old industrial building. and now people are beginning to whine they will not be able to cross the street at night because we’re granting the muslims too many rights. it drives me up the wall.
sorry about this rant, i’m beginning to realize i should probably write my own post about this instead of filling your comments page. but thank you for that post.
bine, you can rant away all you like. what you’re pointing out is perhaps what’s playing out in the streets and in your face in the east is also happening on another level in the west.
I am Asian and have lived in the West for 7 years. And I can honestly say that we are far far away from a color-blind world here in Germany.
I am more aghast at the thought of all those onlookers who didn’t do anything. And the fact that others continue “PRETEND” that there is nothing wrong or that this is just an isolated case is a very scary thought.
This is also NOT the Germany I know. But, you know what, I am also not surprised that something like this STILL HAPPENs. Sad.
Think you hit the nail on the head with the last bit in your post: you wouldn’t know because you cant walk in a different skin. The small daily abuses and insults are far more prevalent and eventually culminate in the violent attacks on “outsiders.” I am always surprised to hear even apparently “liberal” and “western” educated German friends say things that are shockingly racist. Unfortunately precisely the kind of stuff that ensures I travel through Germany very rarely and then do so very carefully. But glad to know there are those who will stand up for what is right.
I appreciate reading your post - you put a lot of my own feelings into words. But I really don’t know what to think about (East) Germany anymore. These are headlines like you might read from some place where order breaks down and ethnic cleansing is going on: Bosnia, Indonesia, etc. I also thought of the case of Joseph in Sebnitz, a young boy who died under mysterious circumstances at a public swimming pool. The idea that neonazis killed him in some kind of public mob action seems all the more credible now. His parents fought for years to prove their case, but they finally left Germany disgusted and frustrated.
p.s. the case of Jospeh is documented in detail at this url:
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/munichletters/letter-from-munich-001
I think it’s before your time in Germany.
indie - i do indeed remember the joseph story. That was in the summer of 2000. I remember how it broke in Bild-Zeitung, how everyone else picked it up until it somehow came out that the mother had paid some witnesses to back up her claim of her son’s murder by a gang of neo-nazis. at least that was what was reported in mainstream media.
i see there is an email address on that (very long) blog post - thanks for the link. would be interesting to follow this up because he adds many things that I don’t recall reading about at the time.
sunny and AnP - do you travel much in the east? do you see an east-west split in the way you’re treated here?
I think it was hard to know what really happened in that town. On the one hand, the scenario that the parents claimed somehow had the ring of truth. On the other hand, there was also the sense of a mother so devestated and believed the story so intensely that she wanted it to be true, when it wasn’t.
Incidentally, I always start to wonder when these public officials try to play things down by saying that something was not an organized right wing action. Isn’t it more terrifying to think that attacks like this happen spontaneously, without organization? That the hate and racism is so deep, it needs no organizing? Strange as it sounds, I would be relieved to know that this was a planned Nazi action.
Well that was the upshot that I had anyway - that she was so completely shattered by the loss of her boy. She couldn’t accept that it all came down to the negligence of her daughter who was supposed to be watching out for him, so she confabulated this neo-nazi scenario because she figured everyone would believe it given the reputation of the place.
I have often thought the same as you - I am not German, but I could be with my looks. How would my experience of the country be different if my skin was a different colour or I wore traditional garments?
from my experience in Germany. Not all are like this but most of them are mentally retarded. the worst of all are the bystanders who kept looking or cheering the mob, uggh!!.
This country is definetely not a safe place for foreigners ” foreigners out” is clear enough.
I have travelled extensively in the West but I try to avoid the East as much as possible. So I cannot really compare. I guess, the stories that I have heard about crimes against different races have turned me off to that part of the country. I still (from time to time) get racially discriminated by Western Germans so I can barely imagine how it would be in the East.
I have lived in Frankfurt for 7 years. I have made a few friends and have met a lot of nice people so I am not THAT turned off. But because of the experiences that I have had (and still continously get), I am extra careful.
Hi to you all:
I was and I am still shocked about these horrific manhunt in Mügeln, the inactivitiy of the police and the bystanders. And I feel very bad that things like that still happen in Germany. I just don’t understand!
But after reading this blog I fell even worse - why is it that your picture of Germany is so very different from mine?
For me, Germany is the safest place on earth.
You feel that Germany is not safe for foreigners? Most Germans are mentally retarded? Even educated Germans are racists? You avoid travelling around because that’s insecure?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt your words and I appreciate you being so frank, but I am stunned that you feel that way. And I am very sorry about that.
I plan to leave Germany to live and work abroad in the not so far future - and I am anxious to learn if being a foreigner myself will change the way I perceive Germany.
silke
One of the few times I agree with you - this also isn’t the Germany I know. I have never seen anything even remotely like this, although I live in Wiesbaden, and have only infrequently traveled into the former East Germany.
When I read stories like this, I am a healthy skeptic - they are often blown out of proportion. The media can easily turn a few drunken guys into an angry mob of 50 with the stroke of a pen. Still, I can’t discount it entirely.
I will say this though - my wife, who is Asian, says she has been well-treated here, but still felt more accepted when she lived in America than she does here.
John - there were enough witnesses there so I’m pretty sure the numbers reported are accurate.
Some of the victims held a press conference today and they all looked like hell. Puffy faces and black eyes. They said they feared for their lives and that it took a half to three-quarters of an hour for the police to arrive. You’d have thought with cellphones, someone would have sounded the alarm right away, so that kind of response time is terrible.
Silke, this is what I don’t get either. It’s safe for you and me, but when something like this happens, it shakes you up, makes you question everything. I wouldn’t read too much btw into Thim’s comment - i think he’s referring to the mob, not to all Germans. Right Thim?
I am an Indian leaving in Germany for past four years and shock to see news and readers comments. Please stop horrifying comments. trouble mongers are everywhere whether it is Germany or India or us. lamenting whole country for the shake of few trouble mongers not going to help anybody. Such kind of problems need to take care in sensible way.
Thanks/
Living in Vienna, Austria I have seen too many racist graffiti too. More or less some Austrians still view foreigners having coloured skin with suspicion.
but what is happening to some states in Eastern Germany is terrifying. With the violence and the mob’s apathy.
I am afraid due to the “bad apples” in your country its reputation is now at stake.
After all everyone expected that the country and the continent as a whole should have learned their lessons well after 1945.
Sad to say, it is becoming a norm. Not only in Germany but the whole Europe.
Read this: http://www.opponent.de/index.php/post/24/
Marco: left a comment at your blog. So you think that the German media makes things up and suppresses things they don’t want people to hear? You and David’s Medienkritik should get together and have a beer. You’ve got a lot in common. Being wrong is one of them.
Thanks for this post and discussion in the comments section.
I have posted a link:
http://atlanticreview.org/archives/801-Indians-Attacked-in-Germany.html
No, we certainly can’t afford to be smug. This type of thing happens ALL over Germany to one degree or another. An article in Tuesday’s Hannoversche Allgemeine cited the results of a study published on Monday on far right racial/xenophobic attacks in Germany in the first six months of this year. With 58 attacks, Niedersachsen, where I live, took first place in front of Sachsen with 39 registerd cases of right violence. In 2006 Nordrhein-Westfallen came first, followed by Niedersachsen. If you go by the population alone, Sachsen-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Berlin get the top positions. Very scary no matter what the statistics. Even one attack is one attack too many.
I’m appalled at what I see as the typical reaction in this country (and yes, I’m making sweeping generalizations based on my 17 years of living here) - 1) sweep it under the carpet and try to pretend it’s not there and 2) blame in on someone else. How about saying “YES! This is huge problem in Germany. It cannot be tolerated any longer and we’re going to do something about it.” The fact that this type of thing goes unchallenged time after time is terrifying. Before the election a couple of years ago, the N*P*D were hard at work at my children’s *school* handing out “Volkmusik” CDs to the kids in the schoolyard. The music of course turned out to be anything but harmless and the school confiscated all the CDs and destroyed them.
I also blend in with the majority and have not been personally confronted with this type of hateful behaviour, but I have seen it happening to others around me in subtle and not so subtle ways. Not physical violence necessarily, just little digs and comments at those who are perceived to be “different”. I also spend quite a bit of time trying to put myself in the victims’ shoes and wondering what my life would have been like here had I not been born with white skin.
If the government is going to pour money into this, they better start with the school system in order to give *every* child a chance at the *same* education. Is that too much too ask?
Christina - you’ve added an important perspective on what’s going on in the west as well.
And as for the NPD - a far-right party that is very good at working the grass-roots and recruiting in schools - what do you think about the idea they should be banned? The bigwigs are talking about it again, but I wonder if it just doesn’t create
sympathy for them among the faithful.
Joerg: thanks for the link on Atlantic Review!
As someone who has lived both in West and East Germany for a few years now and who has travelled extensively within Germany, I would have to agree with the Indian writer who commented above that such incidents are indeed not specific to Germany and can happen in any country around the world.
The open and flagrant racism on the UK’s Big Brother show this year did much to damage trade relations between the UK and India.
Could it be that with Germanys sensitive past that we are looking somewhat closer here at every incident of racist violence. Violence that takes place first hand in the UK, the US, Canada almost daily but by and large goes unreported.
There is no open excuse for racism but lets keep it in context. I for one was disgusted last year when an 18 year old black youth in the UK was axed to death because he was walking with his white girlfriend.
There are two sides to every coin and Germany is not alone in tackling this issue.
I think banning something tends to make it even more attractive, especially in this case. Of course I would LOVE to see this party gone, but the followers would still be out there somewhere doing their thing in a more subversive way.
BTW, reports of another racist attack at a wine festival in Mainz last weekend have come to light today.
http://de.news.yahoo.com/ap/20070824/twl-schwerer-auslnderfeindlicher-bergrif-8b73c05_2.html
@paul baylay
I really appreciate your comment. Very well.
I’m tempted to say this isn’t “the Germany I know”, either, because the Germany I know is the BRD, not the DDR. But that would be unfair to the residents of the “new federal states”. Sadly, though, not dramatically unfair.
All the comments made are very insightful. I have lived outside of Germany for 21 years but I go home at least once a year. In my observations, what urks me most is the still “bystander” attitude most Germans have in even the simplest situations. There is something really deeply ingrained in the average German’s psyche to watch but not do or say anything.
I have been in really harmless situations where people just look and stand as though they were watching TV, no questions asked. This, I think is a huge problem. This was also a huge problem “back then”.
This story is awful. It is not uncommon though. It happens all over the world and it is not until people “relate” to their neighbor more, looks beyond the surface differences and stops being a robotic bystander, that anything will change or progress.
The “bystander” attidue is a problem, right. But do you think politicians really want people to act bravly in general? That would threaten their power, of course.