Letter to America: The Crisis is in our Politics, not our Culture
Dear Christopher Bobyn for ABC News, I find your cultural (?) report on Germany to be rather irritating than enlightning.
I find your “sounding on the ground” to rather be lacking perspective — something I was looking forward to from somebody bringing a ‘fresh pair of eyes’ to my home country.
While you are right about the Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) snaring its first seats in Berlin’s parliament, I cannot but wonder where you encountered the main question of your argument.
We still are the Germans we were a year ago!
The Refugee
And while 75 percent of Germans are in favor of helping refugees that are fleeing from war, the political landscape has arguably changed — for different reasons though. None of which have anything to do with refugees in the first place. Their connection to the shake up of our political landscape is merely unfortunate, but it is not the core of the problems we face.
I fail to see the connections between the German bureaucracy, or the AfD’s recent success, and changes in language skills the refugee Alaa is required. To me it seems obvious that a misunderstanding is underlying Alaas experience:
I would argue, that you cannot study medicine in Germany with language skills limited to B1, or B for that matter. Medicine is not only one of the most sophisticated courses of study, but also one of the most difficult to receive a place to study in the first place — not to mention the financial resources you would need to do so.
Alaa worries about his integration as much as he is expecting it from Germany. Especially, these expectations are something I encountered many times with refugees while helping to provide them with food and clothes after arriving in Passau — the south eastern point of entrance into Germany. And while he needs to adjust his expectations, he also must not worry so much, since he is obviously making every effort to integrate himself.
The Candidate
Joerg Sobolewski is a perfect example for the AfD’s inner conflict. This relatively new party has not figured out quite yet what it wants to be, drifting between its leader’s ‘healthy patriotism’ and the arguments of right wing supporters.
It is a conflict probably best compared to the Republican Party’s dispute with the Tea Party — its former far right supporters. Only the AfD is not an established party. It is a new one with an inner conflict about what to become. And that is all it represents at the moment: the conflict within our society.
But can you blame any society for discussing wether or not it should take in 1.5 million refugees, and who should be entitled to stay, and how to integrate those who will? I do not think so. Can you blame anyone being uncertain or afraid of the situation? I do not think so, either. People are easily scared of what they do not know, and the government has a sad track record of being intransparent. And there lies the cause for disapproval.
Germans do not hesitate to help refugees fleeing from war, as we do not hesitate to donate many billions every year to humanitarian causes — just under 7 billion Euros in 2015. But Germans also want to see the perspective of things. If 1.5 million people are coming in — which is a huge number — we want that to be organized in a considered manner. That is who we are!
Sending 700 refugees in a village with 100 inhabitants could go either way — in every other country or culture.
Considering the huge number of refugees with a different religious background and thereby different cultural values, Germans have to discuss and compromise on how to handle questions raised by these differences. Also, because those questions have been neglected in the (old) Federal Republic of Germany in the first thirty years after the war, and especially with the wave of guest workers from the 1960s, many migrants settled in parallel societies in our biggest cities, like Munich.
And while this negligence has caused remarkable issues, people who for thirty years lived behind the wall in the German Democratic Republic do not even divine what a multicultural society is. From this point of view the officer you interviewed is right by saying
‘… it could be another … cycle of creating isolated ethnic ghettos’.
Cheek by Jowl
So, we are not rubbing our cheeks, yet. Chancellor Merkel’s plan of implementation and integration has lacked the planning part in the first place, and for a long time. But such things take their time of course. And what else should we have done other than providing shelter when it was needed?
How long the right wing supporters will not only find an alternative in the AfD, but somebody who they can vote for in the first place in a long time will be seen. The AfD’s inner conflict might once again lead the party to loose its leader and mediator between the interest groups. If that happens the AfD may quickly loose most of the protest based support it accumulates at the moment, and drifting too far to the right.
Necessary adjustments made by long-established parties like chancellor Merkel’s CDU and Sigmar Gabriel’s SPD — historically and culturally the most important party in Germany — will send highly anticipated signals to their respective, and protest voters.
With that in mind, I do not see how a nationalist party will survive in the Germany of the 21st century, which is also to a good part to be thanked for the many, many well integrated young people with different cultural backgrounds, striving for a good life and good education, representing the 3rd generation of migrants from all over the world.
Yours sincerely,
Sebastian Rothe
