.
The arsonists came at night. Fully aware of the likelihood that people might be in their bedrooms, they set fire to the apartment house, in which --according to the nameplates near the doorbells-- a couple of Turkish families lived. The fact that Turks were the sole inhabitants of that house had been the precise reason for the murderers' choice of their target. In the night from Saturday to Whitsunday five people, all of them women and girls, became the victims of this treacherous crime which took place in Solingen, a small, until then very ordinary town in the west of Germany. It was the climax of a whole series of violent attacks against foreigners since the reunification of Germany. A deadly series which claimed 49 lives so far All these assaults had in common that the perpetrators were led by racist or right-extremist motives. Pictures went around the world showing young men with tattooed arms and closely shorn haircuts, instigated by beer and rock music with explicitly fascist texts, hurling petrol bombs at houses while honest citizens stood by and watched. And the politicians, apparently, are not able or-- as terrified foreigners in Germany claim-- not willing to halt this development. Chancellor Helmut Kohl did not even think it appropriate to be present at the memorial ceremonies. What is happening in Germany at the moment? Has Nazism risen from its grave? Or will Germany turn once more into the scourge of Europe?

The current events make up a very complex issue. Over the past few years facts and statistics with regard to foreigners, aggressors and right-extremism in Germany have been perpetually blurred and distorted—both at home and abroad— to serve various interest groups. Right-extremism, nationalism and the ugly face of racism are by no means confined to Germany. But because of her historical peculiarity these phenomena have always been ascribed a specific significance in the county which made Auschwitz happen..

For the majority of the young Germans who grew up in the sixties, seventies, and early eighties nationalism was out. And so were all its symbols like the national flag or the national anthem. It would have been unthinkable to sing the latter in school or to play it in cinemas after the performance as it is the custom in some other countries. Intoxicated fans bawled the national anthem and waved the country's flag in the football stadiums. But young (West) Germans who wanted to be politically fashionable defined their politics by the absence of patriotism and their national pride consisted of criticism of their country if they were proud of it at all.

The situation in the other German state was different from the start. There the Communist government by definition had seen themselves as not having any links with the brown-shirted [Nazi] past As a result there had never been any attempt at dealing with the past as there had been in the West.

Consequently, the notion of the nation had retained its positive connotation for the people in the former German Democratic Republic. National pride for socialist achievements was not only condoned but even encouraged by the government. After all, one lived in the better part of the two Germanys. The general public, however, saw it differently. After having been fed—or rather brainwashed—with West German advertisements and TV commercials for decades they, indeed, imagined paradise, the land of milk and honey, as the epitome of German ingeniousness—but on the other side of the Wall. Whether identifying themselves with or rebelling against the system and embracing the world view of the class enemy—none of the generations in East Germany ever felt obliged to suppress the sentiment of patriotism....

No wonder the enticers of West German right-extremist groups met with such a fertile ground for their propaganda when the Wall fell in November 1989. While the legal right-wing parties NPD and the Republikaner (Republicans —REP) have tried to attract conservative petitbourgeois citizens, the group which openly profess their loyalty to National Socialism have recruited their followers among East German skinheads and hooligans (a social phenomenon, by the way, which had been anything but unknown in the former German Democratic Republic)...

In spire of the fact that there were hardly any foreigners living in East Germany, the various right-wing fringe groups and splinter parties were highly successful in spreading their message of the great of   'foreignization'. In 1989 less than 200,000 foreign workers and students lived in the East—representing a mere 1.2 per cent of the entire population compared to 5.2 million foreigners in the West—i.e. 8.2 per cent of the population there. And yet the first violent assaults against Vietnamese workers and Polish tourists in the East were reported as early as December 1989. Shocking pictures of attacks against hostels for asylum seekers in Hoyerswerda (in September 1991) and in Rostock (in August 1992) seemed only to confirm the worst prejudices West Germans hold against their brethren in the East: their society had been inferior, they are not used to hard work in a capitalist world, and now they even turn our to be prone to long-buried ideologies of hatred and violence.

However, the spectacular events of Molln, a West German town where neo-Nazis murdered three Turks by setting their house alight in November last year, or of Solingen now, showed that all is not well in the old Republic either. But the good citizens in the West are only too willing to lay the blame on the sudden popularity of nationalist and neo-Nazi ideas in the East, to call West German evil-doers 'imitators', and to lament a spread of xenophobia coming from the former internationalist workers' paradise. On the one hand the East: a hotbed for terror and violence because of all its deficiencies? On the other hand the West: a natural realm of tolerance and understanding because of the long-standing dialogue and exchange of views in its society? Does this picture hold good?

A recent poll among A-level candidates in the West German city of Minich showed that the majority of them believed the actual rate of asylum seekers among the population amounted to a menacing 30 per cent or more, whereas in fact it is less than 1 per cent. Those interviewed were neither two-Nazis not skin-heads but they belonged to the intellectual elite of the young generation. Such grossly wrong estimates about figures concerning asylum seekers, refugees, and foreigners in general are common knowledge nowadays. This cannot be the work of a few splinter parties alone..

Until May this year Germany had the world's most liberal legislation granting every political refugee an individual right to political asylum. The experience of the Nazi-dictatorship encouraged the Founding Fathers of the Federal Republic of Germany to write down this right into the German constitution. As a result of the political changes and upheavals in Eastern Europe and of the growing misery in the Third World but also because of improved international transportation the numbers of asylum seekers from all over the world have been increasing over the past few years.

Soon the right-extremist parries focused their attention on this alleged threat to society. At first, coming up with completely arbitrary figures, a differentiation was made between 'genuine' political refugees and 'economic migrants'. Using very emotional language the latter were denigrated as 'scroungers' or even as 'parasites'. Then, right-wing propaganda tried to create an atmosphere of fear using the absolute numbers of asylum seekers arriving in Germany every year. A horror scenario was conjured up claiming that within a few years foreigners would outnumber the native population. According to these figures from 1989 to 1991 alone about 650,000 refugees applied for political asylum.

But these statistics are faulty.... But above all these figures grossly misrepresent the increase of the number of foreigners living in Germany because they do not take into account that in the same period of time almost 1.5 million foreigners left Germany for good. With other groups of migrants coming to the country—relatives of foreign workers, members of EC countries, etc, and because children born of foreign parents in Germany are nevertheless foreigners due to an atavistic law concerning nationality, the overall 'foreign' population is, however, still slightly on the rise.

Right-wing groups have constantly dwelt upon these statistics using terrifying images of 'floods of asylum parasites', etc. Germany has been compared to a 'boat [which] is full.' Appealing to basic instincts like fear and distrust, providing easy answers to complex problems, offering a clear profile of the enemy to project one's hate and frustration on all this won them wide sympathies at a time when cries abound....

Of all the immigrant nationalities the Turks have a culture the most foreign to German sensibilities. And yet it is nor only their Muslim religion and their extremely patriarchal family structure but their sheer number—with 1.8 million the Turks represent the largest minority in Germany—which has kindled a subliminal anxiety within many Germans. The foreign loses its exotic fascination if it become common and usual. It needs malicious incitement, however, to turn this anxiety into fear and hatred: fear of losing one's own cultural identity and hatred of those who appear to threaten this culture..

The subconscious fear of an uncertain national identity has resulted in a concept of citizenship based upon descent ('ius sanguinis' ) or upon the profession of German culture reflecting the definition given by the Nazi-German's Home Secretary, Wilhelm Frick, in 1939. This can lead to the absurd situation that a Latvian SS-man's grandson who does not speak a single word of German but whose grandfather had proclaimed his loyalty to German culture by joining the SS can be entitled to German nationality. On the other hand a young Turk, who has been born in Germany and who speaks German better than Turkish, still has no right to it. This law governing nationality ensures a steady increase in 'homemade'
foreigner....

The damage right-extremist violence has done to Germany's image abroad is tremendous. Big business has long since realized that the current development runs against their interest The tourist trade fears losses, export figures plummeted already, and Japanese investments fell off to a record low in 1992. And they reacted swiftly: companies started to fire employees who molested foreign workmates in word or in deed (measures which the women's rights movement has been fighting fix for years). It was mainly their initiative which brought about the large turnout of concerned citizens protesting against xenophobia at the nationwide candlelight vigils last December. All this reminded one of the 'public breast-beating contests', as Max Horkheimer used to call the mass abjurations after World War II. And while honest middle-class citizens--in accordance with the government-call the perpetrators 'a few demented criminals', the
Left—in accordance with the press abroad—is busy in conjecturing the scare of reviving Nazism. Who is right?

It is a fact that since the reunification right-extremist terror and aggression have claimed at least 49 lives. The victims were not only foreigners; 15 homeless and disabled were among them. Pretending to feel a call to 'cleanse' Germany from its 'impurities' the young perpetrators insist that they only perform the will of the majority. And in a horrifying way they are right. Xenophobic, racist, and eugenic ideas and prejudices are widespread even if they mostly remain tacit. Although there have always been violent crimes committed by youths, the nature of the tidal wave of aggression currently sweeping over Germany is altogether different. Above all, it is the brutality of the assaults which is shocking. The youths- two out of three are younger than 21- aim at maiming and killing their victims. Where does their readiness to commit acts of violence stem from?...

Frustration and disappointment prevail with unemployment soaring in a country whose citizens had not known anything but full employment for 40 years and whose self-respect had always been based upon work. Only anti-social elements, who refused to work, used to be without a job. Furthermore, despite the snooper activities of the (the former East German Secret Service) there has been a sense of solidarity among the citizens against the bigwigs and party bosses of the ruling SED. Now with jobs scarce and uncertainty everywhere mistrust and envy govern people's minds. Young people are deprived of any perspective for the future. Besides, now that the euphoria about the reunification has long since abated and its true costs are presented by an only too evasive government, East Germans feel more and more excluded as second class citizens by West Germans. They in their turn exclude those whom they deem even further down on the social scale. And so they fall back on the only identity which they think they can be sure of, i.e., their national identity: Germany for the Germans!

What would he the cure of this crisis? First, it would be necessary to focus the attention of the masses on Germany's real problems: the decline of ethical standards, the devastation of the environment, the decrease of work, and the reunification which has virtually failed. Equally important would be to restrain the media from offering a forum for the perpetrators. The former were often rightly accused of depicting the crimes as if there were no victims or rather of portraying the aggressors, the 'misled youths', as the actual victims. Assaulting people is a safe bet to make it into the head-lines of nationwide newspapers—but only if the motives are right-extremist. Some TV teams have been rumoured of having even paid Nazi hooligans to hurl stones or raise their arms with the illegal Hider salute.