Chinese in Germany

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chinese in the horse-drawn tram , drawing by Christian Wilhelm Allers in his book Spreeathener (1889)

The Chinese community in Germany (alternative names are German-Chinese or Chinese-German ) consists of ethnic Chinese migrants in Germany and their descendants. With around 212,000 people, they are one of the numerically smaller groups of immigrants in Germany (as of 2013).

overview

Memorial stone for Chinese seamen and citizens who died in Hamburg in the Ohlsdorf cemetery

While around 80,000 citizens of the People's Republic of China lived in Germany in 2009 , the number of ethnic Chinese in Germany is likely to be higher, because this number does not take into account naturalization or illegal immigration to Germany. There are also Taiwanese citizens and migrants of Chinese origin from Singapore , Malaysia , Indonesia and other countries in which there is a Chinese minority.

It is assumed that there are around 212,000 people of Chinese descent in Germany, including those who have acquired German citizenship (as of 2013). This makes the Chinese community in Germany one of the smaller ethnic groups. According to statistics from 2004, 4.5% of the Chinese living in Germany were also born there.

Since 1935 there have been two grave fields (Bp 68 and N 34-35) for deceased Chinese at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg . A memorial stone marks the entrance to both areas. Since 2017 there has been a 2000 m² grave field for members of the Chinese ethnic group in Bonn's North Cemetery .

The "Daoist Association Germany" is located in Stralsund and was founded as the umbrella organization of the Daoists .

history

In the 19th century until the First World War

German-Chinese University in Tsingtau, in 1913

In Germany, from around 1870, Chinese seafarers and sailors who worked on German ships settled in the port cities of Bremen and Hamburg; In 1890 there were 43 Chinese in Hamburg.

Another part of the early Chinese community in Germany consisted of students who stayed in the German Empire for a limited time. Among them was Zhou Enlai , later leader of the Chinese Communist Party .

1898 acquired German Empire , the leasehold Jiaozhou Bay with the capital Tsingtao , which for the first time a significant number of ethnic Chinese living on German territory. A “German model colony” was to be created in Kiautschou. Schools, universities, train stations, port facilities and other public buildings were built during the 16-year German colonial era. At the beginning of the First World War , Germany had to cede the colony to Japan in 1914 .

Chinese immigration to Germany declined with the beginning of the First World War. During this phase , several hundred Chinese were interned in various German cities, particularly in Bremerhaven and Hamburg .

Weimar Republic and Third Reich

Memorial plaque near the former “Langer Morgen” labor education camp , where Chinese people were interned
Chiang Wei-kuo in the Wehrmacht uniform of a flag junker with rifle cord

After the First World War, the number of Chinese immigrants rose again. They formed the fourth largest group of foreign students in Germany in the mid-1920s . Some sympathized with communism , and some of the Chinese living in Germany became members of the KPD , which maintained a “Chinese language circle” in Berlin . Larger Chinese communities formed in the 1920s, particularly in Hamburg and Berlin. On Hamburg-St. Pauli , a small “ Chinatown ” was created with the “ Chinese Quarter ”. Chinese living there ran laundries , restaurants and ballrooms like the "Cheong Shing". The "Hong Kong Bar" was opened in 1938 as a restaurant and pub and has been a pub with an attached hotel since 1964 .

Chiang Wei-kuo , an adopted son of Chiang Kai-shek , married the German-Chinese Chui Ru-hsüeh in 1957. Chiang Wei-Ko completed his military training in Germany in the 1930s and belonged to the 98 Mountain Infantry Regiment of the 1st Mountain Division. With an Alpine war training , he took part in the Anschluss of Austria as a tank commander. Chiang Wei-Ko used his contacts to the military members of the Wehrmacht who were taken over into the Bundeswehr to establish military cooperation between the Republic of China and the Federal Republic of Germany. Between 1964 and 1972, 25 officers were trained by the Bundeswehr leadership academy.

The son of the revolutionary Xie Weijin is Berlin-born Han Sen and the author of an autobiography: A Chinese man with the double bass . Between 1928 and 1933 he worked for various Comintern institutions in Berlin. His son, who was born in Berlin, fled Germany with his father, Erwin Kisch , Otto Heller and Willi Münzenberg in 1933. For the next three years he continued his work for the Comintern in Austria and Switzerland. There he met the Romanian doctor Anna Kapeller, who became his wife. Both went into the Spanish Civil War for the International Brigades .

After the seizure of power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in 1933 living in Germany Chinese were initially exposed to institutionalized racial discrimination. Since the majority of the Chinese living in Germany were politically left-wing, the Chinese, even if they were not politically active, were monitored or interned because of their political attitudes, so that the majority of them left Germany again.

In 1935 around 1,800 Chinese lived in Germany, around 1,000 of them in Berlin. By 1939, the number of Chinese living in Germany had dropped to around 1,100. In 1942 all Chinese living in Berlin were deported to the Langer Morgen labor education camp, and in 1944 the “Chinese Quarter” on Hamburg-St. Pauli was evacuated and the Chinese living there were also interned in labor camps as part of the Chinese campaign . Chan Ho Bau and Liang Wong were buried as concentration camp victims in the grave field "Victims of Different Nations" in the Ohlsdorf cemetery.

After the end of World War II

Postage stamp from Deutsche Post with the Puning Temple in Chengde (1998)

The Chinese community in Germany, which had been almost completely expelled by National Socialism, grew again after the end of the Second World War. In 1948 there were over 350 Chinese in East and West Berlin. After the Second World War, Chinese immigration to Germany began more intensely than before. Some of the Chinese immigrants to Germany first settled in other European countries (particularly in Great Britain ) and then moved on to Germany. In 1967 there were almost 2,500 Chinese citizens living in West Germany, many of whom supported the Kuomintang regime.

A Chinese community existed in the GDR from the 1980s onwards, as a small number of contract workers were recruited from the People's Republic of China.

Relations between Germany and China were honored in 1998 with a stamp with the Puning Temple in Chengde , which should be understood as an homage to the Chinese living in Germany.

Situation in the 21st century

Relative frequency of Chinese citizenship at the district level in 2014 in relation to other foreign population groups

Between 2004 and 2007, around 1,000 people of Chinese descent received German citizenship every year. Chinese restaurants and Asian markets are part of all major German cities in the 21st century. Chinese exchange students study at almost all universities in the country. Institutes for Sinology and other academic institutions with a Chinese focus are located in several German university cities. There are also some schools in Germany that teach Chinese . The number of people of Chinese descent in Germany was estimated at over 110,000 in 2008. Overall, it is assumed that there are more than 212,000 people of Chinese descent in Germany. Regionally over-represented (compared to other foreign population groups) this group of people is in university cities such as Heidelberg , Erlangen , Darmstadt , Braunschweig , Göttingen , Jena , Dresden , Ilmenau , Bernburg , Dessau and Freiberg . Among the independent cities in the Federal Republic of Germany, Darmstadt had the largest proportion of the population of migrants from China in the 2011 census.

" Chinatowns " no longer exist in Germany since the "Chinese Action" of the National Socialists in Hamburg, but only individual agglomerations of Chinese companies and residents. Attempts have been made for several years to revive Hamburg's Chinatown on St. Pauli. Hamburg maintains institutionalized relations with the People's Republic of China. The German-Chinese economic summit " Hamburg Summit: China meets Europe " is held every two years , and Shanghai is Hamburg's twin city. The Chinese Consulate General is located in Hamburg-Othmarschen . With the “China Competence Center”, Düsseldorf succeeded in poaching some Chinese companies from Hamburg. Beijing is Berlin's twin city, and the embassy of the People's Republic of China and German-Chinese organizations are also located there . The Asia-Pacific Weeks in Berlin take place every two years .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gütinger, Erich (1998), "A Sketch of the Chinese Community in Germany: Past and Present", in The Chinese in Europe by Benton, Gregor; Pieke, Frank N., Macmillan, pp. 199-210, ISBN 978-0-312175-26-9 .
  2. ↑ a b c Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commision ROC (Taiwan) ( Memento of the original from October 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ocac.gov.tw
  3. ↑ Immigration from non-European countries almost doubled. (No longer available online.) Federal Institute for Population Research, March 1, 2017, archived from the original on April 19, 2017 ; Retrieved April 18, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bib-demografie.de
  4. ↑ destatis.de: Population - Foreign population on December 31, 2003 by country of origin ( Memento from May 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Article (online and print) “Commemoration of the dead and offerings among the Chinese” by Petra Schmollinske in the magazine of the Förderkreis Ohlsdorfer Friedhof e. V., No. 124, I, Hamburg 2014. ISSN 18667449.
  6. ^ Article in Die Welt "Treaty on Chinese grave field signed in Bonn" from April 25, 2017.
  7. ↑ Erich Gütinger: The history of the Chinese in Germany: An overview of the first 100 years from 1822 , Waxmann Verlag , 2004. ISBN 978-3-830914-57-0 .
  8. ↑ Lars Amenda: Ideas and Inquiries: Chinese Seafarers, German Women, and Bremen Authorities during the First World War . In: Peter Kuckuk (Ed.): Passages to Far East . People between Bremen and East Asia (=  contributions to the social history of Bremen ). tape 23 . Edition Temmen, Bremen 2004, ISBN 3-86108-684-0 , p. 184-203 .
  9. ↑ berlin-magazin.info: Chinese in Berlin
  10. ↑ Lars Amenda: "No cosmopolitan city without Chinatown" (article based on the dissertation Foreign - Harbor - City. Chinese migration and its perception in Hamburg 1900 - 1970)
  11. ↑ Article “The 'Snowflake' from Hamburger Berg ” in Hinz & Kunzt . The Hamburg street magazine. No. 302, April 2018 edition. Pages 32–37.
  12. ↑ Chern Chen: German Military Advisors in Taiwan, German-Chinese Relations in the Cold War . In: Quarterly books for contemporary history of the Institute for Contemporary History . Volume 51, Issue 3, 2003.
  13. ↑ Han Sen: A Chinese man with the double bass . Claassen Verlag, ISBN 3-546-00277-6 .
  14. ↑ Ni Huiru: The Call of Spain: The Chinese Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) . Guangxi Normal University Press, ISBN 7-5495-3629-5 .
  15. ↑ a b Dagmar Yu-Dembski : “Persecution of the Chinese in National Socialism - Another Chapter of Repressed History” , in: Bürgerrechte & Polizei / CILIP , issue 58, 3/1997.
  16. ^ Benton, Gregor (2007), "Germany", Chinese Migrants and Internationalism, Routledge, pp. 30-37, ISBN 978-0-415418-68-3 .
  17. ^ A b Gütinger, Erich (1998), "A Sketch of the Chinese Community in Germany: Past and Present", in Benton, Gregor; Pieke, Frank N., Macmillan, pp. 199-210, ISBN 978-0-312175-26-9
  18. ↑ a b Christiansen, Flemming (2003), Chinatown, Europe: An Exploration of Overseas Chinese Identity in the 1990s, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-700710-72-0 , p. 28
  19. ↑ Mint Magazine - The Philatelic Journal. Issue November / December 1998. Bonn (Deutsche Post AG), 1998. ISSN 1430-8533.
  20. ↑ Naturalized persons, by selected countries of former citizenship ( Memento of April 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) - information from the Federal Statistical Office in Germany.
  21. ↑ Eva-Maria Götz in Visiting Students: Schweigsame Chinesen , Der Tagesspiegel , 2008
  22. ↑ Map page: Chinese in Germany - counties. Accessed on July 29, 2017
  23. ↑ Hamburg Summit: China wants to be the solution , Berliner Tagesspiegel, October 11, 2014