Asylum debate

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The asylum debate was a political argument about a change in the basic right to political asylum in the Federal Republic of Germany . It developed out of a debate about German policy on foreigners that began at the end of the 1970s and was primarily related to so-called “ guest workers ” . Due to the increasing number of asylum seekers and the increased immigration for economic reasons, the asylum debate became independent from the mid-1980s. In 1986, the Union parties CDU and CSU started a campaign against abuse of the right to asylum , which was largely supported by the Bild newspaper and Die Welt am Sonntag and later rated as one of the sharpest, most polemical and momentous disputes in post-war German history. Politicians and the media are accused of fueling the mood against foreigners through the partly populist asylum debate.

After reunification , the asylum debate was accompanied by a wave of racially motivated acts of violence, primarily directed against asylum seekers, such as the riots in Rostock-Lichtenhagen . The fact that the peak of the number of asylum seekers coincided with the unprecedented social and economic upheaval in East Germany and the massive immigration of repatriates made the development particularly explosive.

In 1992/93 the debate led to the asylum compromise between the governing parties CDU, CSU and FDP as well as the SPD opposition. With the amendment to the Basic Law , the individual right to asylum was severely restricted. After that, the number of asylum seekers fell considerably, so that the asylum debate suddenly lost importance.

Framework

The right of asylum in the Federal Republic until 1992

Until June 30, 1993, Article 16 of the Basic Law guaranteed as an absolute and subjectively public right to politically persecuted persons in the Federal Republic an unrestricted, individually enforceable basic right to asylum, refugees were not allowed to be refused at the border. In 1948/49 the Parliamentary Council consciously granted the right to asylum to every politically persecuted person, regardless of person, origin or political convictions. The Basic Law thus went far beyond international humanitarian law , which does not give foreigners a legal claim, but rather the sovereign states the right, but not the duty, to grant asylum. This liberal right to asylum was a direct consequence of the experiences of political refugees from Germany during the Nazi era .

Since the late 1970s, a problem in German asylum policy has been that most of the applicants were no longer traditional political refugees, but refugees from civil war countries , who thus did not fall under the asylum law, which related to individual political persecution in the narrowest sense. Even if their application for asylum was rejected, the Federal Republic of Germany could not send back those refugees who threatened life and limb in their home country due to the Geneva Refugee Convention and had to tolerate their stay as Convention refugees ( de facto refugees ) .

The mainly Polish , Soviet and Romanian emigrants were not counted among the refugees, many of whom spoke just as little German as the asylum seekers, but were directly recognized as German citizens . Due to the unequal treatment of resettlers and asylum seekers from the same countries, the ius sanguinis based on German ancestry increasingly became a problem in migration policy.

Reducing the number of asylum seekers has been a major concern of German politics since the early 1980s. Since the right to asylum was anchored in the Basic Law, changes required a qualified two-thirds majority . Accordingly, the fundamental right itself remained untouched for a long time, while there have been numerous changes to the asylum procedure since the 1970s. The changes were mainly aimed at accelerating the asylum procedure to tighten the criteria for the right to asylum, to make access to the Federal Republic, rejected asylum seekers faster deport and develop by a deterioration of the living conditions of asylum seekers as a deterrent to. The way to speed up the asylum procedure by increasing the number of understaffed immigration authorities and administrative courts has not been taken.

With the Acceleration Act of 1980 the guarantee of legal recourse was abolished and the decision on the asylum application was transferred to an individual officer of the Federal Office, the possibility of objection was eliminated. The Asylum Procedure Act of 1982 accelerated court proceedings, ordered regular accommodation in shared accommodation and restricted freedom of movement through the residence obligation. In addition, the basic right to physical integrity could no longer be used to derive a legal right to medical treatment, especially expensive operations. As of 1986, asylum seekers were banned from working for a period of five years , and the rules for accommodation in communal accommodation were tightened and the recognition of asylum applications based on emergency situations or armed conflicts was expressly excluded.

One limiting strategy has been to issue visa bans that prevent potential refugees from reaching Germany by plane. Such barriers were erected in 1976 for Palestinians from Jordan and in 1980 for refugees from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Iran, Turkey, Bangladesh and India. Airlines were threatened with a fine and a repatriation obligation not to transport passengers without a valid visa. The German embassies were instructed to handle the issuing of visas strictly and to refuse a visa precisely if the assumption appeared to be justified that the tourist visa should be used to apply for asylum in the Federal Republic of Germany. A loophole remained with the Berlin-Schönefeld airport in the GDR . Since the Federal Republic did not recognize the Berlin Wall as a border, there were in principle no controls on the West Berlin side. In 1985, however, the federal government succeeded in persuading the GDR to stop transit traffic via East Berlin .

In 1987 the Asylum Procedure Act was completely revised and now went to the limits of what seemed possible without changing the Basic Law. The recognition rate then fell to well below ten percent. Legislation and case law no longer saw even the threat of torture at home as a conclusive reason for granting asylum. Refugees from the Eastern Bloc, on the other hand, were given the rule of presumption of political persecution. This led the Federal Administrative Court to judge on the one hand prosecution of a communist regime as a political means of safeguarding power, and on the other hand torture in NATO member Turkey as a "common means" of maintaining the state order and as "not relevant to asylum". In a decision of February 22, 1990, the Federal Constitutional Court forced another change of course in jurisdiction by recognizing torture as a reason for asylum again.

Attempts to speed up the asylum procedure have met with little success. On the other hand, the strategy of countering the rising numbers of asylum seekers with a deterrent deterioration in living conditions had considerable consequences. Because of the denial of a work permit , the state had to take over the social benefits across the board, and because of the ban on living privately, it had to arrange for collective camps. The municipalities were particularly hard hit by immigration, because they had to finance and organize these tasks.

The waiting period for a work permit was one year from 1980 and was extended to two years in 1981 and five years in 1987. Eastern Europeans were privileged to receive the permit and did not have to wait or only had to wait a year. The forced to do nothing promoted the perception in the German population that asylum seekers only wanted to take advantage of the social benefits of the German state. The waiting period for a work permit for asylum seekers was abolished again in 1990/91 because it had not proven itself.

The development of migration to Germany from the mid-1970s to 1992

year Asylum applications Newly arriving
emigrants
1975 9,627 19,657
1976 11,123 44,402
1977 16,410 54,251
1978 33,136 58.123
1979 51,493 54,887
1980 107,818 52,071
1981 49.391 69,455
1982 37,423 48,170
1983 19,737 37,925
1984 35,278 36,459
1985 73,832 38,968
1986 99,650 42,788
1987 57,379 78,523
1988 103.076 202.673
1989 121,418 377.055
1990 193.063 397.073
1991 256.112 221,565
1992 438.191 230,565

Until the mid-1980s, the “guest workers” determined the federal government's policy on foreigners and the public debate. In 1973 there was a recruitment ban. When, in the same year, Palestinians, along with Eastern Europeans, made up a larger proportion of asylum seekers for the first time, the term " asylum abuse " appeared for the first time .

While the number of foreigners living in Germany as a whole fell significantly in the mid-1980s, the number of asylum seekers rose sharply at the same time. Accordingly, the interest in the political debate increasingly shifted from the Turks in Germany to the refugees. In the second half of the 1980s, as the “ Iron Curtain ” was beginning to open, an increasing number of East European refugees came to the Federal Republic, so that the ethnic composition of the asylum seekers changed again. Until the mid-1980s, people from the crisis areas of Africa, Asia and Turkey had sought asylum. In 1988, however, the Eastern Europeans made up more than half of the asylum seekers. From 1991 onwards, many refugees from the Yugoslav wars were added, so that immigration via the asylum procedure reached a historic high in 1992 with around 440,000 and Eastern Europeans now accounted for almost two thirds of asylum seekers. At the same time, the recognition rate was only 4.3 percent. The Yugoslav de facto refugees were also among the rejected asylum seekers, but their stay in the Federal Republic was tolerated due to the Geneva Refugee Convention. The group of de facto refugees exceeded that of asylum seekers (610,000) and those entitled to asylum with their families (230,000) with 640,000 in 1992.

Since the late 1980s, the public debate has focused so much on asylum seekers that their share in the influx of foreigners to Germany has been greatly overestimated. Even the figures on which the discussion was based were problematic: it was not recorded in the official statistics that around a third of the asylum applications submitted were settled by onward or return migrations before the procedure was completed. The general awareness that asylum seekers themselves only made up a third of the immigration of foreigners in 1992, the year with the most asylum applications, while most came to Germany as family immigrants or as EC foreigners with extended immigration and residence rights. For an appropriate assessment of the asylum debate, the large number of resettlers must also be taken into account, who often differed little from asylum seekers from the same countries, but were legally treated as Germans and privileged by politics. Since 1988 their number has been between 200,000 and 400,000 per year. In West Germany there was also the immigration of emigrants from the GDR and from 1990 immigration from the new federal states (1989: 343,854, 1990 to June: 238,384).

In absolute figures, Germany took in the most refugees of the Western European countries, while in terms of population, Switzerland and Sweden had the highest number of asylum seekers before Germany. Relatively few asylum seekers were accepted in France and Great Britain, where immigration from the countries of the former colonies dominated. The southern European countries, on the other hand, were affected by particularly high numbers of illegal immigrants .

Socio-economic developments

The first recession in the Federal Republic as a result of the first oil crisis resulted in a recruitment ban in 1973. The unemployment rate , which was 3.8 percent in 1980, rose to 9.1 percent in 1983 and stagnated at this level in the following years.

With German reunification and the opening of the Eastern European borders, the framework conditions for German immigration and asylum policy changed dramatically. The experiences with foreigners in West and East German society were very different. A significant number of foreigners had only been living in the GDR since the 1970s, but in 1989 their share did not even make up one percent of the working population. Most of them were contract workers from Vietnam and Mozambique who lived under tight controls and difficult conditions in the GDR. Since they were strictly separated from the GDR population, no public exchange developed and xenophobic sentiments were also widespread in East Germany.

In 1990/91 the economic and social problems of the association became visible in East Germany and caused initial frustrations. By 1992 over 14 percent of the East German population lost their jobs. In this situation from December 1990 asylum seekers were distributed to the cities and districts of the new federal states, which were neither organizationally nor politically prepared. The fact that the accumulation of the numbers of asylum seekers and resettlers coincided with the unprecedented social and economic upheaval in East Germany made the development particularly explosive.

Background: Controversy over the immigration and asylum policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s

Debates about the policy on foreigners until 1982

In the 1980 Bundestag election , foreigner policy was an important issue in the election campaign for the first time. The opinion research institute Infas found a profound change of opinion in the West German population with regard to the policy on foreigners. Observers concluded from the study that elections could be won or lost with this issue, an insight that should henceforth become an axiom of foreign policy. The debate still mainly focused on the so-called guest workers, especially the Turks in Germany, and was aimed at warding off further immigration and against the integration of foreigners already living in Germany.

Under the name Bürgerinitiative Ausländerstopp (BIA), right-wing extremist groups from the environment of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) started operating in several German states from 1980 . A Kiel list for the restriction of foreigners received 3.8 percent of the vote in the local elections on March 7, 1982. In the state elections in Hamburg in June 1982 , the Hamburg list for a ban on foreigners was the first to run a party in a state election that had made xenophobic resentment part of its program. Although it only achieved 0.7 percent of the vote, it brought the “foreigner problem” even more strongly onto the political agenda. The NPD made the slogan “Stop foreigners - Germany for the Germans” their campaign topic. The Union parties CDU and CSU took up the "foreign-critical attitude in the population" and tried to occupy the issue, but the SPD also saw itself increasingly under pressure to react.

Foreigners and asylum policy controversies 1982 to 1986

In his first government declaration on October 13, 1982, the newly elected Chancellor Helmut Kohl named foreigner policy as the third of four key issues in an emergency program. Above all, it is important to prevent unlimited and uncontrolled immigration. The new black-yellow coalition will also do everything possible to prevent abuse of the right to asylum. The new Federal Minister of the Interior Friedrich Zimmermann (CSU) declared in December 1982 that many economic refugees saw the German asylum law as an “ open sesame in the real or sometimes only supposed social paradise of the Federal Republic of Germany”.

In September 1983, the Kemal Altun case caught the public. The asylum application of the 23-year-old Turk, Altun, was rejected despite the death penalty in Turkey for a political offense . After 13 months in detention , he threw himself from the sixth floor of the administrative court in Berlin. At the same time, a report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees denounced the treatment of asylum seekers in Germany. The German asylum policy and deportation practice thus came to the attention of a critical public for the first time.

In February 1985, the Union-led federal states of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Berlin demanded that a larger number of asylum applications than before be rejected from the outset as irrelevant and that granted asylum should be re-examined every two years. Legal scholars such as the President of the Federal Constitutional Court, Wolfgang Zeidler , or Professors Werner Kanein , Kay Hailbronner and Helmut Quaritsch also soon advocated an amendment to Article 16 .

The Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss was referring to a common swear word when he claimed in 1985: "The Tamils ​​pour in by the thousands, and if the situation in New Caledonia comes to a head, we will soon have the Kanaks in the country." The Berlin Senator for Interior Heinrich Lummer (CDU) warned that it was imperative to “protect Germany from flooding” because “We have a right of asylum, the whole Red Army can come and the KGB too . If they only say the word 'asylum' at our border, we cannot send them back ”.

The asylum debate

The asylum campaigns of the Union parties from 1986

From 1986 the two Union parties, the CDU and CSU, carried out a consistent asylum campaign. On the one hand, the highly emotional topic was suitable for winning elections, on the other hand, pressure should be exerted on the SPD, since without the Social Democrats the two-thirds majority necessary for an amendment to the Basic Law could not be achieved. The Bavarian Interior Minister Edmund Stoiber (CSU) again threatened the “end of the unity of the Union” in the event that the CDU swerved in the direction of the FDP and the SPD on the issue of asylum and waived an amendment to the constitution. For the first time, the issue of asylum was brought into the focus of an election campaign before the state elections in Bavaria in 1986 .

The strategy of making the asylum issue a central campaign issue for the 1987 federal election was not without controversy within the party. The CDU General Secretary Heiner Geißler warned of the CDU and CSU parliamentary group:

“If someone gives the advice to make this topic an election campaign topic by January 25th, then he must be aware that there must be an escalation of emotions and feelings in the domestic political dispute. And it is my firm conviction that the Christian Democratic Union of Germany cannot maintain this without changing, [because we] cannot get rid of the spirits that are called there. And I warn against bringing up a problem in such a way that it creates expectations that we will not be able to meet in the next five months. Then the problem will turn against us. "

A group of CDU members of the Bundestag criticized their own party and the federal government with Christian-Social Positions for a rational and ethically responsible asylum policy , which were only published after the Bundestag election :

“Politicians and the media have to find their way back to sober and appropriate language. Exaggerations as well as panic and fear-inducing terms such as flood, electricity, flood etc. make rational solutions difficult. When using numbers, the real modest orders of magnitude must be made visible. So far, when comparing the number of refugees in other European countries, the German shares have been exaggerated in an unrealistic manner by using different criteria. Anyone who stirs up xenophobia and aggression through unclean or one-sided presentation of numbers or exaggerated and emotionalizing language destroys the population's willingness to accept and contributes to the undermining of the basic right to political asylum.

Chancellor Kohl rejected the request for an amendment to Art. 16 in September 1986, referring to the example of the Carmelite Edith Stein , who was murdered in Auschwitz because she was unable to emigrate to Switzerland in time for bureaucratic reasons. The Federal Ministry of Labor , headed by Norbert Blüm (CDU), also resisted a significant tightening of German policy on foreigners, and the employers' associations traditionally close to the Union demanded, above all, the legalization and stabilization of foreigners in the country.

Before the 1990 Bundestag election, the Union parties renewed, this time even more sharply, the campaign for a change in the fundamental right to asylum. Scenarios were designed that African and Asians entitled to asylum could approach Germany “in the order of magnitude of 50 million”. The debate was largely supported by the Bild -Zeitung and Welt am Sonntag and, according to historian Ulrich Herbert, quickly developed into one of the “sharpest, most polemical and momentous disputes in German post-war history”.

Poster of the CDU for the citizenship election in Bremen 1991

The sharpness of the asylum debate did not diminish even after the 1990 Bundestag election. CDU General Secretary Volker Rühe accelerated the campaign in September 1991 by calling on all local politicians of his party on September 12th to make asylum policy an issue and by sending out standardized argumentation guides, parliamentary motions, sample inquiries and press releases. Among other things, cases should be highlighted "in which asylum seekers have unjustifiably used state services several times". The Süddeutsche Zeitung commented that anyone who had read this knew “definitely how to produce envy and anger on a general staff basis. And when envy turns into hate among a horde of muddled heads (who think they are in the best company after such contributions to the debate), the General Staff stand there, amazed at the violence that suddenly broke out ”. In the Bremen citizenship election on September 13, 1991 , right-wing extremist parties received 7.7 percent of the vote; Severe riots against foreigners took place in Hoyerswerda from 17 to 23 September (see the section on the wave of racist violence ). In the Süddeutsche Zeitung , Rühe said a few days later that if the SPD opposed a change to the asylum law in a conversation scheduled for September 27, “every asylum seeker after that day is an SPD asylum seeker”.

Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl warned of a state of emergency in October 1992 .

Opponent of a constitutional amendment

A grand coalition of the two opposition parties, the SPD and the Greens, through the churches, human rights groups, the social associations and the trade unions, to large parts of the coalition partner FDP, advocated maintaining the liberal basic right to asylum for humanitarian and historical reasons. However, especially after reunification, many in both the FDP and the SPD agreed to change the constitution.

Above all, the Greens, on the other hand, went beyond the demand for uncompromising maintenance of the right to asylum, which they regarded as a acid test for the democratic and human rights conditions in the Federal Republic. They demanded a general right of residence for all immigrants, arguing that the economic policy of the developed countries from colonialism to the present is responsible for the economic misery in the developing countries . From this a responsibility for economic refugees from these countries is derived. The Bavarian Prime Minister Max Streibl (CSU) called the Greens “the real agitators” in the asylum debate and spoke of a “multi-criminal society”, alluding to the concept of a multicultural society .

Heinrich Albertz (SPD), member of the Parliamentary Council advising on the Basic Law and at that time Lower Saxony's Minister for Refugee Affairs, ruled in the mid-1980s:

“40 years ago we had to and could take in millions of refugees in West Germany, at a time when we were not one of the richest countries in the world. Anyone who realizes this and then hears the cheek with which official bodies stir up xenophobia and treat asylum seekers worse than cattle, the reddening of the face rises. "

The industry and business associations, the trades and a large part of the business press advocated the thesis that Germany needs continuous immigration for economic and demographic reasons in order to maintain its standard of living. However, they preferred controlled immigration to the unregulated immigration of repatriates and asylum seekers. CDU politicians such as Heiner Geißler and Labor Minister Norbert Blüm also adopted this line of argument.

Individual ethnic groups in the asylum debate

Side discussion about the repatriates

Resettlers in the Friedland transit camp , June 1988.

The SPD tried to widen the debate to include repatriates , whose number at times significantly exceeded that of asylum seekers. She countered efforts to soften the basic right to asylum by demanding that Article 116 of the Basic Law , which she saw as antiquated, be deleted. The SPD chancellor candidate Oskar Lafontaine sparked a heated controversy when he called for humanity to take precedence over nationality and warned against giving preference to “fourth or fifth generation of German origin” over personally threatened Africans. Constitutional lawyers such as the former President of the Federal Constitutional Court, Ernst Benda , also questioned the resettlers' constitutional right to admission .

While there was general euphoria towards the refugees from Eastern Europe in 1989/90, the mood changed in the course of 1990. Surveys showed that the repatriates from the east, who outnumbered the asylum seekers, were initially perceived as a burden. Although the federal government stuck to the principle that resettlers are Germans, it tried to slow down immigration with the Resettler Admission Act of 1990. The Consequences of War Adjustment Act , which came into force on January 1, 1993, limited the influx to 225,000 emigrants per year, at the same time proof of sufficient knowledge of German was now required for recognition of German nationality.

Roma in the asylum debate

While media coverage of the Yugoslav wars created broad acceptance for the refugees from these war zones, the Roma met with pronounced anti-Gypsy resentments. These formed the largest group among the asylum seekers from Romania and Bulgaria. The " gypsies " met with more opposition across Europe than any other population group. The recognition rate for asylum seekers from Romania and Bulgaria was only 0.2 and 0.1 percent respectively, although the Roma there demonstrably suffered massive discrimination . While the local governments were putting pressure on the Roma to apply for asylum in Germany, the federal government tried again to get rid of them by means of readmission agreements and financial aid.

The form of the debate

The role of the media in the asylum debate

The media, especially the Springer newspapers Bild and Welt am Sonntag , supported the Union's campaign. They spread a panic-like mood and contributed significantly to the sharpness and polemics of the asylum debate. Both newspapers basically proceeded from the thesis that the asylum seekers were mainly swindlers and fraudsters who wanted to get social benefits in the Federal Republic. Ulrich Reitz wrote in the world of "more than 90 percent swindlers". The Bild newspaper reported in lurid series on cases of asylum fraud. When the first attacks on asylum seekers in East Germany occurred and those affected fled back to West Germany, this was the proof for the Bild -Zeitung that these were economic refugees who wanted to make themselves comfortable. "How stupid do you think the Germans are?" Asked Bild . It was repeatedly emphasized that “the economic refugees disguised as asylum seekers” would cost taxpayers well over three billion marks every year.

Between June 1991 and July 1993 the issue of asylum / foreigners was cited as the most urgent problem in surveys, well before German unification and unemployment. The Bild newspaper organized a survey among its readers in September 1991 and headlined: “Sensational survey. Asylum: Change the Basic Law! 98% for it ”. Representative surveys showed that 55 percent of Germans wanted to restrict their right to asylum, but 41 percent did not.

In Die Welt and Welt am Sonntag more intellectuals had their say who legitimized the widespread mood in favor of a change in fundamental rights. The historian Golo Mann said in an interview with Die Welt in October 1991, after the first eruptive outbreaks of violence like those in Hoyerswerda:

“By far the best thing to do is to protect the borders in such a way that they cannot come in the first place. Closing the borders would be the best solution. You should give the rejected a package for the way back. This would save both sides from violence. [...] So it would be best to get these unfortunate people out as soon and as kindly as possible, to where they came from. "

In the Bild newspaper, Arnulf Baring called for the immediate abolition of the basic right to asylum, since the basic problem is that “our good-natured social legislation has become a magnet that attracts the poor around the globe”, therefore “even granting asylum should not be the right to include social welfare as it is due to Germans ”.

The language of the asylum debate

In the asylum debate in the 1980s and early 1990s, the term “asylum seekers” was commonly used. It was criticized that this term is already limiting, since nouns ending in -ant in German often have a pejorative meaning. However, there are some indications that the term was originally used without judgment and was only interpreted by the political left as a political catchphrase with xenophobic and discriminatory connotations .

The term “ asylum abuse ” was an integral part of the debate, and the applicants were often referred to as “bogus asylum seekers” or “asylum fraudsters”. The fact that the large number of asylum seekers committed an abuse of the right of asylum was always demonstrated by the reference to the low recognition rate. In October 1992, the Bavarian Interior Minister Edmund Stoiber spoke of a “one hundred thousand asylum abuse”. The rejection of an asylum application was equated with the disclosure of a deliberate attempt to obtain social benefits under false pretenses. However, this line of argument neglected the fact that the asylum procedure did not investigate whether the asylum seeker was persecuted or whether his life, limb or liberty was threatened, but whether there was, from the point of view of the target country, politically motivated persecution in the country of origin. In addition, in the political discussion almost always only the approval rate of the Federal Office was argued. It was not taken into account that a not inconsiderable number of originally rejected asylum applications were successful through legal action before the administrative courts. Asylum applications from refugees from civil war countries had no prospect of success, but the Federal Republic of Germany could not deport them due to the Geneva Refugee Convention. In 1990, 32.4 percent of the rejected asylum seekers were given a right to stay for “legal, humanitarian or factual reasons”. This very large group of rejected asylum seekers was obviously not economic refugees. The President of the Federal Administrative Court, Everhardt Franßen , warned in February 1992 against generally speaking of an abuse of the right of asylum in the case of rejected asylum applications.

A characteristic of the asylum debate was the regular use of water metaphors, which illustrated the asylum seekers coming to Germany as a threatening, almost unstoppable force of nature. Typical compound words were “Asylantenstrom”, “-flut”, “-welle” or “-schwemme”. The talk of “sealing off” Germany and “curbing the flow of refugees”, “breaking the dam” or “smuggling” illegal immigrants into the water metaphors as well as the image from the barrel that is overflowing. The slogan “The boat is full!” Was visualized several times, first on a Republican election poster in the early 1990s, and then on the front page of Der Spiegel in September 1991 .

The excited debate prompted the Society for the German Language in 1991 to choose a bad word of the year for the first time . The term “free of foreigners ” , which was used among other things in the attacks on asylum seekers and contract workers in Hoyerswerda, was selected . The reasoning stated that the memory of the word " Jew-free " from the Nazi era marked the ideological home. In 1993 the term “ foreign infiltration ” was given the negative price. The shortlist for the Unword of the Year came up to 1993 from the context of the asylum debate, the "raging society" cited by Edmund Stoiber, the term "condolence tourism" used by a spokesman for Helmut Kohl for mourning rallies on the occasion of the murders in Mölln and Solingen (Kohl lehnte participation from), the euphemism “measures to end residence” for the deportation of rejected asylum seekers and the “up” or “clapping” of foreigners.

The political parties and the media were accused of not having taken a decisive stand against xenophobia, on the contrary, of having translated resentment into discourse-capable vocabulary. The asylum debate has poisoned the political climate intolerably for years and has assumed proportions that endanger democracy. In addition, surveys showed that the reputation of representative democracy and its institutions was seriously damaged by the nature of the conflict.

The partially populist campaign was largely responsible for the heated mood and made pogrom-like attacks against foreigners such as the Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots possible. In a dramatic situation of upheaval, she presented a clear image of the enemy and set in motion a process of disinhibition with a constantly outbidding tone, which then developed its own dynamic. In view of the suggestive images and the threat scenarios, sober arguments would have had little chance of being heard. The journalist Heribert Prantl posed the rhetorical question of whether the political agitation , which spoke of refugees in disaster jargon, was unsuitable for disrupting public peace, for attacking the human dignity of others by inciting hatred against sections of the population or by insulting or slandering them - So whether the criminal offense of sedition was not fulfilled by numerous statements in the asylum debate . Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen (FDP), the federal government’s commissioner for foreigners , stated in December 1992: “The way in which asylum and foreigners policy has been discussed and argued over the last few weeks and months has contributed to the fact that xenophobia has occurred Seems to have become socially acceptable. ”In retrospect, the CDU / CSU parliamentary group leader Wolfgang Schäuble did not want to deny that there was an“ indirect connection ”between the asylum debate and xenophobic acts of violence.

Right-wing radicalism and racism in the context of the asylum debate

Successes of right-wing extremist parties from 1986

Election successes of right-wing extremist parties 1986-1992
(only results from 3.0%)
date choice Political party percent
Oct 12, 1986 Bavaria REP 3.0%
13 Sep 1987 Bremen DVU 3.4%
Jan. 29, 1989 Berlin REP 7.5%
June 18, 1989 European elections REP 7.1%
Jan. 28, 1990 Saarland REP 3.4%
Oct 14, 1990 Bavaria REP 4.9%
0Dec 2, 1990 Berlin REP 3.1%
29 Sep 1991 Bremen DVU 6.2%
0Apr 5, 1992 Schleswig-Holstein DVU 6.3%
0Apr 5, 1992 Baden-Württemberg REP 10.9%

From 1986 onwards, the right-wing extremist parties Die Republikaner and DVU profited from the discrepancy between conducting an aggressive asylum campaign without, however, making any decisive changes . After a respectable success in the state elections in Bavaria in 1986 with 3.0 percent of the vote, the Republicans did not get more than 1.2 percent in the following elections. The DVU arrived at the state elections in Bremen in 1987 to 3.4 percent of the vote. Since she was able to pass the five percent hurdle in Bremerhaven , she moved into the citizenship with a seat due to a special feature of the local electoral law.

In the election campaign leading up to the only state elections in 1989, the election to the Berlin House of Representatives , the Republicans polarized and polemicized with xenophobic television spots. A few days before the election, polls were released that predicted three percent for Republicans. It was a complete surprise to all observers that the party immediately won 7.5 percent of the vote and entered the House of Representatives. In the second election of the year in Germany, the European elections , the party received over two million votes nationwide, corresponding to 7.1 percent of the vote.

In 1990 a total of ten state elections took place. In the constituent parliaments in the five new federal states, the topics of the right-wing extremist parties played no role due to the reunification, so that the parties of the extreme right remained insignificant there. In contrast, the Republicans failed in Bavaria in October 1990 with 4.9 percent, just barely at the five percent hurdle.

The DVU moved into the citizenship of Bremen in September 1991 with 6.2 percent. In the Bremen election campaign, the SPD mayor, Klaus Wedemeier, took a tough line against the right of asylum and even prevented refugees from staying in the city. The fact that the SPD lost 11.7 percentage points, but the DVU moved into the citizenry, clearly showed the mainstream parties that instrumentalizing the asylum issue not only fostered xenophobic attacks, but ultimately only strengthened right-wing extremist parties in elections.

In 1992 there were only two state elections in Germany and both were extremely successful for the right-wing parties. In April, the DVU entered the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament with 6.3 percent, and the Republicans received 1.2 percent of the vote. In April 1992 the Republicans increased their state election results in Baden-Württemberg to 10.9 percent.

For the Union parties, especially for the CSU, the Republicans were a challenge to which they had to respond. Most of the founding members of the Republicans were former party members of the CDU and CSU. Some saw in the new party the realization of the “ fourth party ” discussed in the 1970s , which should bind a right-wing conservative electorate nationwide . Most Republican voters had also left the Union. Against this background, the Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss demanded that there should be no democratically legitimized party to the right of the CSU.

Wave of racist violence

In 1986/87 asylum seekers accommodation was attacked for the first time. An arson attack was carried out on emergency tents in West Berlin, another in Hesse was flooded, and a planned asylum seekers' home was also set on fire. A right-wing extremist scene clearly developed as a by-product of the sharp debate.

Since the summer of 1991, with the increasing intensity of the asylum debate, xenophobic violence has also reached a new dimension. The riots in Hoyerswerda in Saxony between September 17 and 23, 1991 play a key role . For several days, up to 500 people attacked a dormitory for contract workers and a refugee hostel with incendiary bottles, iron balls and other objects. Local residents took part in the attacks, violent neo-Nazi shouting slogans - skinheads were applauded by many bystanders. The police were overwhelmed and surrendered to the perpetrators by transporting the almost 300 contract workers away. The majority were deported directly.

Hoyerswerda marked the beginning of a series of acts of imitation. Mostly in eastern Germany, skinheads and right-wing youths attacked, mainly asylum seekers' homes, and used firearms and incendiary devices in the clashes that sometimes lasted several days. In Greifswald, for example, more than 200 hooligans attacked a home for asylum seekers after a soccer game, 35 people were injured, some seriously. In an attack by 25 right-wing extremists in Saal (Western Pomerania) in March 1992, a Romanian asylum seeker was beaten to death. There were also numerous attacks in West Germany, which were mostly carried out by small groups of perpetrators and without spectators, such as an arson attack on an asylum seekers' home in Saarlouis in September 1991, in which the Ghanaian asylum seeker Samuel Kofi Yeboah was burned, or an arson attack in Hünxe in the Lower Rhine region October 1991, in which four Lebanese refugee children were severely burned. An exception was the day-long attacks by a few hundred residents in Mannheim-Schönau in May 1992 on a refugee home. Up to 78 attacks on foreigners were counted in a single day.

Another escalation level was reached with the riots in Rostock-Lichtenhagen. For five days in August 1992, several hundred rioters, some of them right-wing extremists, attacked the central reception center for asylum seekers and a dormitory for former Vietnamese contract workers in the so-called "Sunflower House " in Rostock-Lichtenhagen . After the reception center had been evacuated, the adjoining dormitory, in which over 100 Vietnamese and a ZDF television team were still staying, was set on fire with Molotov cocktails . At the height of the conflict, the police withdrew completely at times and those trapped in the burning house were left to their own devices without protection. The pogrom-like riots broadcast live by numerous television stations were perceived as a turning point in German post-war history, mainly because up to 3000 applauding viewers partially protected the attackers and hindered the police and fire service. Rostock-Lichtenhagen found numerous acts of imitation. In the week after the riots alone, violent neo-Nazis threatened 40 dormitories with incendiary devices and stones and fought street battles with the police.

The discussion about the causes was linked with the asylum law debate during the Lichtenhagen riots. Federal Interior Minister Rudolf Seiters (CDU) demanded at a press conference in Rostock on August 24, 1992: “We have to act against the abuse of the right of asylum, which has led to an uncontrolled influx of people into our country, I hope that the last Resolutions by the SPD to take part in an amendment to the Basic Law finally clear the way. "A statement read out by Prime Minister Berndt Seite (CDU) a few days later resembled the statements made by the Federal Minister of the Interior on August 24:" The incidents of the past few days make it clear that a supplement to the asylum law is urgently needed because the population is overwhelmed by the unchecked influx of asylum seekers ”. Two weeks after the riots, Justice Minister Herbert Helmrich (CDU) declared: “We need a new wall”, because “what will flood us will reach Turkey”. The thesis that the Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots were politically instrumentalized for the debate about changing the asylum law is therefore controversial but widespread. The charge was "verbal arson".

Reactions to Racist Violence

The public reacted first with socket and helplessness to the wave of xenophobic violence of 1992. intellectuals, artists and politicians published on 25 September 1992 in the Frankfurter Rundschau the Frankfurter call , the subtitle is drifting to the right Germany wore. In the full-page advertisement, the 250 or so first signatories called on people not to remain silent, to oppose xenophobia and right-wing extremism and not to undermine the constitution. It was only after the murder attacks on Turks in Mölln and Solingen in November 1992 and May 1993, respectively, that broad protests began to take place, including chains of lights as a new form of demonstration, in which hundreds of thousands took part. In December 1992, 800,000 people are said to have demonstrated in Munich and Hamburg alone. On November 9, 1992, 100,000 people gathered in Cologne for a concert against racism and neo-Nazis under the motto “ Ass huh, Zäng ussenander ” in order to “end the widespread speechlessness about developments in our country”. Around the same time, between October 1992 and January 1993, the proportion of those who expressed understanding in surveys for violent riots against asylum seekers halved from seventeen to eight percent in eastern Germany and from twelve to five percent in western Germany.

In the international press, the acts of violence were linked to the Nazi era . The Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet wrote on the occasion of the riots in Rostock-Lichtenhagen about the “German Kristallnacht 1992”, Svenska Dagbladet felt reminded of the “terrifying images from dark history” and the Italian La Repubblica saw Germany as the land of “racial terror” ". The British Independent on Sunday ruled: “The Nazi gangs in Germany are the product of a racist crisis, not the cause. They are the result of a systematic government campaign that presents foreigners as a problem group ”. The Israeli daily Haaretz commented on the wave of violence in November 1992: “The German government and Helmut Kohl will find it difficult to wash away the suspicion that they did not stop the wave of violence against foreigners for a very specific reason: In the hope of reluctance to mobilize the social democratic opposition in the Bundestag for the abolition of Article 16 ”. In the Bild newspaper it was said: "Foreign countries are beating the Germans again".

Heribert Prantl complained that hardly anyone had used the excesses of violence as an opportunity to hold back and treat the sensitive asylum issue more carefully. Instead, everyone only felt confirmed in their previous opinion. In October 1992, the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Edmund Stoiber, demanded that "finally the massive influx of unauthorized asylum seekers" be stopped if one did not want to prepare the ground for "extremist demagogues" for the evil seeds of xenophobia.

The judiciary reacted mildly to the events. Most of the 257 criminal proceedings initiated have been dismissed. Only three perpetrators were sentenced to three years' imprisonment.

The asylum compromise

CDU poster for the asylum debate (November 1992)
Asylum seekers
after 1992
year number
1992 438.191
1996 98,644
2000 71,124
2004 35,604
2008 22,085
2011 53,347
2013 109,580
2014 173.072

Even during the Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots, the SPD repositioned itself on the issue of a change in the right to asylum with the Petersberg Wall in August 1992. Wanting to avoid riots like the one in Rostock in the future served as an important argument for a change in the Basic Law.

Before the SPD special party conference in mid-November, CDU general secretary Peter Hintze initiated the “Dear SPD members” campaign with a letter published on November 5 and with corresponding posters, an appeal to members of the SPD to approve the constitutional amendment. Many Social Democrats, according to Der Spiegel , interpreted the poster campaign as "an infamous attempt to maintain the dispute over the favorite subject of asylum between the two big parties".

On December 6, 1992, the German Bundestag passed the asylum compromise with the votes of the CDU, CSU, FDP and SPD; the amendment to the law was passed by 521 votes against 132. It came into force on July 1, 1993. By changing the Basic Law (now Art. 16a GG ) and the Asylum Procedure Act , the individual's basic right to asylum was severely restricted. Since then, asylum seekers can be turned away without a hearing if they enter from a safe third country or a safe country of origin . Since all of Germany's neighboring countries are considered safe third countries, it was practically no longer expedient for asylum seekers to enter by land.

The amendment to the Basic Law was flanked by the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act . This significantly worsened the material conditions for asylum seekers. It carried out the separation of the duty of care for asylum seekers from the legal rights to social assistance . Benefits in kind now replaced cash benefits, and health benefits were reduced to the bare minimum.

The reform of the asylum law came into force in June 1993. Measured against the reduction in the number of refugees, the asylum compromise was a great success: The number of asylum seekers in Germany fell continuously to 19,164 in 2007. The recognition rate fell to 0.8 percent in 2006, and only 251 asylum applications were approved. The asylum compromise defused the excited asylum debate quickly and effectively.

By contrast, the asylum compromise is criticized by critics as a "declaration of bankruptcy of politics" with regard to humanity and international solidarity. In 1993, Heribert Prantl ruled that the basic right was only a mock-up. Ultimately, the amendment to the Basic Law meant: "Politically persecuted people enjoy the right to asylum - but not in Germany". He also criticized the fact that the asylum compromise passed the problems on to neighboring countries through its third country regulation. Prantl would have found it more honest to completely abolish the basic right to asylum.

The UNHCR and non-governmental organizations such as Pro Asyl complained about the isolation of “ Fortress Europe ”. With the narrowing of legal access routes to Germany, illegal immigration increased.

literature

  • Klaus J. Bade : Foreigners and Asylum Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany. Basic problems and lines of development. In: Immigration country Germany. Conference of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on May 14 and 15, 1992 in Potsdam, Research Institute of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Dept. of Work and Social Research, Bonn 1992, ISBN 3-86077-128-0 , pp. 51–67 .
  • Klaus J. Bade: Foreigners, resettlers, asylum. An inventory. CH Beck, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-37462-X .
  • Hans-Bernd Brosius, Frank Esser: Escalation through reporting? Mass media and xenophobic violence. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Opladen 1995, ISBN 3-531-12685-7 .
  • Ulrich Herbert : History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47477-2 .
  • Matthias Jung, Thomas Niehr, Karin Böke: Foreigners and migrants in the press. A discourse-historical dictionary on immigration since 1945. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 3-531-13278-4 .
  • Matthias Jung, Martin Wengeler , Karin Böke (eds.): The language of the migration discourse. Talking about "foreigners" in the media, politics and everyday life. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1997, ISBN 3-531-12924-4 .
  • Thomas Niehr: The asylum debate in the German Bundestag - a “great moment” for parliament? Studies on the culture of debate in the German Bundestag. In: Armin Burkhardt, Kornelia Pape (Hrsg.): The language of German parliamentarism. Studies on 150 years of parliamentary communication. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 3-531-13364-0 , pp. 241-260.
  • Franz Nuscheler : International Migration. Escape and asylum. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2004 (Basic Knowledge Politics 14), ISBN 3-8100-3757-5 .
  • Cord Pagenstecher: "The boat is full". Terrifying vision of a united Germany. (PDF; 655 kB) In: Gerhard Paul (Hrsg.): The Century of Pictures. Volume II: 1949 to today. Göttingen 2008 (series of publications by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Volume 734), pp. 606–613.
  • Heribert Prantl : Hysteria and helplessness. Chronicle of the asylum debate since German reunification. In: Bernhard Blanke (ed.): Immigration and asylum in the competitive society. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1993, ISBN 3-8100-1120-7 .
  • Hans-Jürgen Weiß: Violence from the Right - (not) a TV topic? For television coverage of right-wing extremism, foreigners and asylum in Germany. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1995, ISBN 3-8100-1175-4

Web links

  • Foreigners and Asylum ( Memento from December 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Uwe Andersen, Wichard Woyke (Ed.): Concise dictionary of the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany. 5th, updated edition, Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2003, online as a licensed edition on the website of the Federal Agency for Civic Education.
  • zeit.de: Fairy lights and SPD asylum seekers. In: The time. November 29, 2012.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Ulrich Herbert : History of foreigner policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 299.
  2. ↑ Ursula Münch: Asylum Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany. 2nd, updated edition, Opladen 1993, p. 22.
  3. ^ Franz Nuscheler : International Migration. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 140.
  4. ^ Franz Nuscheler: International Migration. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 139.
  5. ↑ Ursula Münch: Asylum Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany. 2nd, updated edition, Opladen 1993, p. 17 ff.
  6. ^ A b c Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 264.
  7. ^ A b c d e Ulrich Herbert: History of the foreigner policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 265.
  8. ^ A b Franz Nuscheler: International Migration. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 145.
  9. ^ A b c Franz Nuscheler: International Migration. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 144.
  10. ↑ a b c Heribert Prantl : Hysteria and helplessness. Chronicle of the asylum debate since German reunification. In: Bernhard Blanke (ed.): Immigration and asylum in the competitive society. Opladen 1993, p. 301.
  11. ↑ Klaus J. Bade : Foreigners, resettlers, asylum. Munich 1994, p. 106.
  12. ^ A b c Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 270.
  13. ^ A b Franz Nuscheler: International Migration. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 142.
  14. ^ Franz Nuscheler: International Migration. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 143.
  15. ↑ Ursula Münch: Asylum Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany. 2nd, updated edition, Opladen 1993, p. 72 ff.
  16. ^ A b c Franz Nuscheler: International Migration. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 133.
  17. ^ A b c Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 269.
  18. ^ A b c Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 263.
  19. ↑ Information for 1986–1992 according to Ulrich Herbert: History of foreigner policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 276; Figures for 1975–1985 based on the socio-economic reporting project soeb.de: Reporting on socio-economic development in Germany (PDF; 167 kB), p. 2.
  20. ^ A b Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 274.
  21. ↑ Hans-Bernd Brosius , Frank Esser: Escalation through reporting? Mass media and xenophobic violence. Opladen 1995, p. 15.
  22. ^ A b c d Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 289.
  23. ^ A b Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 288.
  24. ^ Franz Nuscheler: International Migration. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 132.
  25. ↑ Klaus J. Bade: Foreign Germans: 'Republic volatile' - emigrants - emigrants. In: Klaus J. Bade (Ed.): Germans abroad - foreigners in Germany. Munich 3 1993, p. 403.
  26. ↑ a b Federal Statistical Office: Labor market
  27. ^ A b Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 296.
  28. ^ Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 297.
  29. ^ Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 301.
  30. ^ A b Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 308.
  31. ↑ a b c d e f Ulrich Herbert: History of foreigner policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 249.
  32. ↑ Foreigners: The people are fed up with it , Der Spiegel, May 3, 1982.
  33. ↑ As Rome once did . Der Spiegel, 21/1982, May 24, 1982.
  34. ^ Government declaration of the Federal Chancellor on October 13, 1982 before the German Bundestag in Bonn: "Coalition of the center: For a policy of renewal". ( Memento from September 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  35. ↑ a b Quoted from Ulrich Herbert: History of foreign policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 267.
  36. ^ A b Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 266.
  37. ^ A b Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 267.
  38. ^ A b Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 268.
  39. ↑ Quoted from Ulrich Herbert: History of foreigner policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 268.
  40. ^ A b c Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 271.
  41. ↑ tagesspiegel.de: Who is Edmund Stoiber? , October 11, 2004.
  42. ↑ Quoted from Ulrich Herbert: History of foreigner policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 271 f.
  43. ↑ Quoted from Klaus J. Bade: Ausländer, Aussiedler, Asyl. Munich 1994, p. 102 f.
  44. ^ Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 278.
  45. ^ A b Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 300.
  46. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung of October 12, 1990, quoted from Ulrich Herbert: History of foreign policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 300 f.
  47. ^ Christian Fuchs, John Goetz : The cell. Right-wing terror in Germany. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2012, p. 53 f.
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  50. ↑ Quoted from Klaus J. Bade: Ausländer, Aussiedler, Asyl. Munich 1994, p. 116.
  51. ^ Franz Nuscheler: International Migration. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 141.
  52. ^ A b Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 309.
  53. ^ A b Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 313.
  54. ^ A b Franz Nuscheler: International Migration. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 131.
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  56. ↑ a b c bpb.de: Foreigners and Asylum , accessed on May 7, 2012; Excerpt from Uwe Andersen, Woyke Wichard (Ed.): Concise dictionary of the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany. Opladen 5 2003.
  57. ^ A b c d Franz Nuscheler: International Migration. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 134.
  58. ^ Ulrich Herbert: History of the policy on foreigners in Germany. Munich 2001, pp. 299, 303.
  59. ^ Die Welt, July 26, 1990, quoted from Ulrich Herbert: History of foreign policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 299.
  60. ↑ a b picture Hamburg, January 30, 1991, quoted from Ulrich Herbert: History of foreigners policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 302.
  61. ↑ picture on Sunday. October 21, 1990, quoted from Ulrich Herbert: History of foreigner policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 299.
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  63. ↑ a b fig. September 21, 1991, quoted from Ulrich Herbert: History of foreigner policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 303 and note 199, p. 394.
  64. ↑ Fig. Hamburg, January 30, 1991, quoted from Ulrich Herbert: History of foreigner policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 305.
  65. ↑ Fig. October 13, 1990, quoted from Ulrich Herbert: History of foreign policy in Germany. Munich 2001, p. 299 f.
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  68. ↑ a b Quoted from Klaus J. Bade: Ausländer, Aussiedler, Asyl. Munich 1994, p. 109.
  69. ^ A b Klaus J. Bade: Foreigners, resettlers, asylum. Munich 1994, p. 110.
  70. ↑ a b Ursula Münch: Asylum Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany. 2nd, updated edition, Opladen 1993, p. 179.
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  72. ↑ Klaus J. Bade: Foreigners, resettlers, asylum. Munich 1994, p. 112.
  73. ^ Evelyn Meyer: Use of language in the asylum debate. In: Matthias Jung, Martin Wengeler, Karin Böke (eds.): The language of migration discourse. Opladen 1997, p. 158 ff.
  74. ↑ Cord Pagenstecher: "The boat is full". Terrifying vision of a united Germany. In: Gerhard Paul (ed.): The century of pictures. Volume II, Göttingen 2008, p. 123.
  75. ↑ The Unworts from 1991 to 1999. In: unwortdesjahres.net. Technical University of Darmstadt, archived from the original on March 25, 2016 ; accessed on March 23, 2016 .
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  90. ↑ The concept of pogroms in relation to Rostock-Lichtenhagen is problematized and justified by Thomas Prenzel: Rostock-Lichtenhagen in the context of the debate about the restriction of the basic right to asylum. In: Thomas Prenzel (Ed.): 20 years Rostock-Lichtenhagen. Rostock 2012, p. 10, note 2.
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  103. ↑ Section: 3.10 Action on asylum policy “Dear SPD members!”, Report from the federal office: Annex to the report by the Secretary General. 4th party congress of the CDU in Germany: We secure Germany's future, 12. – 14. September 1993. CDU, accessed April 28, 2014 . P. 21
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This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on November 25, 2012 .