Russian-speaking population groups in Germany
The Russian-speaking population groups in Germany are those who live in Germany , regardless of ethnic or national classifications, and who also predominantly speak Russian among themselves in Germany .
overview
According to a calculation by Aleksandr Arefjew, the deputy director of the sociological research center of the Russian Ministry of Education, there were around six million Russian speakers in the Federal Republic of Germany in 2007, including three million ethnic Russians who immigrated from the successor states of the Soviet Union . Wolf Oschlies objects to Arefjev's way of counting that “there is obviously a mix-up here: One imagines Germany to be like the Baltic States , Kazakhstan and other countries with strong Russian ethnic groups, but overlooks the fact that the Russian speakers in Germany [... ] have no great interest in preserving their Russian language skills and passing them on to future generations. "
In 2012, of the three million immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Germany, 500,000 were Russian citizens. The immigrants came to the Federal Republic of Germany in the years shortly before and after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union after reunification . Most traveled as Russia German or Russian-speaking Jews or as members of their families one (among many Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and people from other nations of the former USSR ). According to Oschlies, many of the ethnic Russians, especially the younger and more educated among them, want “to integrate into their new surroundings as quickly as possible and assimilate culturally . They do not want to be recognized as Russians at all, they keep silent about their Russian origins and as 'propagandists' for the language and culture of the Russians they are a total failure. "Arefjew also assumes a steady sharp decline in the number of Russian speakers in Germany and Western Europe. Natalie Hübner contradicts Oschlies' thesis that people who grew up with the Russian language in Germany quickly renounced its use and that such assimilation should be assessed positively, contradicts Natalie Hübner in a study for the Cologne University of Applied Sciences . Huebner's thesis is supported by the fact that people who can also speak Russian have a competitive advantage in the strongly export-oriented German economy over people to whom this does not apply, and that more and more people are becoming aware of this.
The former Interior Minister of Lower Saxony , Heiner Bartling , stated in 2003 that in previous years the proportion of ethnic German family members had changed to 25 percent (with 75 percent non-German family members). Russian was largely the preferred colloquial language when entering Germany, especially among the last ethnic group. It remained so for many afterwards, especially in regions with a high proportion of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
A relatively new trend is that Germans from Russia, who consider themselves primarily as Germans, cultivate and use the specific socialization experiences that they or their ancestors had in the former Soviet Union in Germany. This concerns on the one hand their knowledge of Russian, which some have come to appreciate as a valuable part of their human capital , on the other hand cultural traditions that they have acquired in an environment dominated by Russians, and knowledge of the country.
history
In the case of emigration from Russia and the Soviet Union to Germany or the German-speaking area since the beginning of the 20th century, four waves of immigration are distinguished.
The first wave was the result of the Russian Revolution in 1917. In the 1920s, many Russians in exile, mostly fled opponents of the Bolsheviks , nobles and bourgeoisie from the middle and upper classes , lived in the German Reich, around 360,000 in the Berlin area alone . Among them were the writer Vladimir Nabokov , the painter and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky and the entrepreneur Leo Leontowitsch Gorbatschow (operator of the vodka distillation of the same name ). The name "Charlottengrad" for Berlin-Charlottenburg comes from this time . Most of them left the German Reich several years before the National Socialists came to power in 1933 .
For the second wave are prisoners of war and especially 200,000 to 250,000 displaced persons and defectors in the Second World War , which remained after the war in Germany (see also:. Displaced Persons ).
The third wave consisted of so-called dissidents - intellectuals whose works violated the guidelines of the communist dictatorship in the Soviet Union and who therefore went into exile in the West. They were often expatriated from the Soviet Union. Among these were philosophers and writers, Lev Kopelew , Alexander Zinoviev , Friedrich Gorenstein and Vladimir Voinowitsch . This wave peaked in the 1970s and 1980s. In addition, some Russians managed to settle in the Federal Republic of Germany during the so-called Cold War .
The fourth wave finally began after the Second World War and only assumed mass character with the perestroika era at the end of the 1980s. The big wave lasted until the mid / late 1990s (since 1995 it has been decreasing sharply from year to year). During this time, comparatively more people than before came to Germany. In contrast to the previous waves of immigration, today's immigrants from Russia do not have such a clear characterization, the mixture is much more colorful. The majority of the Russians coming to Germany consist of Russian family members of Jews or Russian Germans, who in turn attach importance to their German nationality, which distinguishes them from other immigrants (including their Russian relatives traveling with them), although Russian Germans usually join as early as 1990 spoke better Russian than German when they entered Germany. Since the Russian- Germans recognized as such are “ Germans ” within the meaning of Art. 116 GG and “ German people ” within the meaning of Section 6 BVFG and automatically become German citizens upon entry, the accompanying Russian family members can also be naturalized more easily as spouses of Germans . This does not apply to other non-German immigrants from Russia, such as Jewish quota refugees .
Legal basis for the "fourth wave"
Since the beginning of perestroika in 1986, the first large groups of citizens of the Soviet Union moved to Germany. A distinction is made between German repatriates ( ethnic German repatriates since January 1, 1993 ) and their Russian relatives on the one hand, and Jewish quota refugees on the other. The resettled Russian Germans and their non-German family members are treated as Germans within the meaning of the Basic Law . You are therefore entitled to German citizenship immediately after entering the country .
On July 11, 1990, the GDR government under Lothar de Maizière passed the “ Resolution on the Provisional Regulation of Residence and Asylum for Foreigners ”. In addition to five general rules, the new regulation consisted of a specific point 6: "The government of the German Democratic Republic initially grants foreign Jewish citizens who are at risk of persecution or discrimination residence for humanitarian reasons" to a limited extent. Although this promise was not included in the unification treaty, it formed the basis for West German policy in dealing with Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union after German unification.
Since 1991, Jewish emigrants from the former Soviet Union have had the opportunity to enter Germany as quota refugees. The basis for this is a resolution of the Conference of Interior Ministers of January 9, 1991, according to which the HumHAG ( Act on Measures for Refugees Admitted within the Framework of Humanitarian Aid Actions ) applies accordingly to this group of people. The HumHAG has ceased to be in force through Article 15 Paragraph 3 No. 3 of the Immigration Act. Jews from the former USSR except Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are admitted according to §23 (2) AufenthG. The decision of the Conference of Interior Ministers was taken as an agreement between the Kohl government and the Central Council of Jews in Germany .
Ending the “fourth wave” through reform of the law on expellees
In a survey published by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in 2003 , in a survey of several hundred people recognized as ethnic German repatriates, 36% of those questioned stated that they had spoken German in their families.
The people who still want to move to Germany now have to make the claim that they are members of the German people and not just Russified of German origin credible by proving that they have sufficient command of the German language. If their language skills are inadequate or if it can be proven that they have acquired their language skills in foreign language classes at school or through extracurricular German courses, they can be held responsible for the fact that their parents did not adequately teach them the German language.
The focus on the German language skills of those wishing to leave the country was justified in 2001 during the deliberations on the new version of § 6 BVFG in the German Bundestag : "Spätaussiedler would hardly be perceived as (former) ethnic Germans if they could be recognized as such without knowledge of German; in addition, their integration would be made more difficult. In particular, a lack of knowledge of German is increasingly turning out to be a major obstacle for the German repatriate families to integrate into Germany. This creates burdens for the social budget , which will be difficult to explain, especially if recognition as a repatriate is to be possible despite a lack of knowledge of German. "
The legislature changed the legal situation for repatriates with a new version of § 6 BVFG with effect from September 7, 2001.
In order to motivate people of German origin, especially in Poland and Russia, to stay in their current residential areas, the federal government has developed a system of retention aids on the basis of Section 96 BVFG .
Entry applications for both ethnic Germans and contingent refugees are now submitted to the German embassy in the country of departure. The processing time can take up to a few years. In view of the poor knowledge of German, which most applicants do not have at all, the probability of being recognized as a repatriate has become very low.
Methodological problems
The central question when counting “Russian speakers” is: “Who should be considered Russian-speaking?”. According to migration researcher Jannis Panagiotidis from the University of Osnabrück, the number of 6 million Russian speakers in Germany includes all people living in Germany who can communicate in Russian, including former GDR citizens who have learned Russian at school. The questions of which of these people speak Russian as their mother tongue and who within their family (also) communicate in Russian are not answered by these figures. It should also be taken into account that not every non-German from a successor state of the Soviet Union speaks Russian as their mother tongue. On Georgians for example, is not true.
According to Panagiotidis, what should be counted is all those who have received lessons in Russian in primary schools in the Soviet Union or in Russia. In 2015 there were around 1.95 million people in Germany who were born in the Soviet Union or its successor states and were older than ten years when they entered Germany. Only they can easily be described as “Russian speakers”, since these people have systematically learned Russian, and in terms of the structure of the lessons, not as a foreign language (unlike, for example, former GDR citizens). It should be noted that with this counting method, the question of whether a person counted has German ancestors or not is ignored, i.e. all counted count as " migrants ". This method is heavily criticized by some German people. Panagiotidis, on the other hand, advocates that the term “post-Soviet migrants” establish itself as an umbrella term.
The question of the extent to which knowledge of Russian has been or will be passed on from their parents to the generation of those who did not learn Russian in school and what level this knowledge is has not yet been systematically researched.
See also
- Russian culture in Germany
- Commons : Russian-speaking diaspora in Germany - collection of images, videos and audio files
Individual evidence
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↑ Russian Language in the World ( Memento of the original from December 23, 2008 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. , Report of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Moscow 2003 (Russian) “По оценочным данным, русским языком в той или иной степени владеют около 6 млн. человек, в т.ч. 3 млн. - выходцы из республик бывшего СССР "
- ↑ Wolf Oschlies: Lingua incognita? ( Memento of the original from July 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Eurasian magazine . Issue 3/2010
- ^ Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Federal Republic of Germany: About the relationship between Russians and Germans. Ambassador Vladimir M. Grinin in an interview for 'Russia TODAY' ( Memento of the original from July 4, 2012 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. . April 2012
- ↑ Natalia Kühn: The Rediscovery of the Diaspora: Lived Transnationality of Russian-speaking Migrants in Germany and Canada. Springer Verlag, Cologne, ISBN 978-3-531-18205-6 , pp. 12 .
- ↑ Natalie Hübner: Meaning of the Russian Language ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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.
- ↑ Michael Strauss (Ed.): Stand up to violence . LIT publishing house. 2003, p. 35.
- ↑ Renee Willenbring: Russians on the flat country . Deutschlandradio Kultur . May 12, 2009
- ↑ Participation in life in the city. "Germans from Russia" - contact and intermediary in Lohne . Nordwestzeitung , June 12, 2012
- ↑ Natalia Kühn: The Rediscovery of the Diaspora: Lived Transnationality of Russian-speaking Migrants in Germany and Canada. Springer Verlag, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-531-18205-6 , pp. 112 ff .
- ^ Foreigners in the GDR. Retrieved April 3, 2019 .
- ^ Federal Government: Immigration Option for Soviet Jews. German Bundestag, 1990, accessed on April 3, 2019 .
- ↑ Wolfgang Gärthe: Determination of qualifications and knowledge of migrants: Assessment procedures as the basis of integration plans , p. 32 (PDF; 248 kB)
- ↑ German Bundestag: Report by the MPs Günter Graf (Friesoythe), Hartmut Koschyk, Marieluise Beck (Bremen), Dr. Max Stadler and Ulla Jelpke . Printed matter 14/6573 (PDF; 84 kB)
- ↑ BGBl. 2001 I p. 2266
- ↑ Emigrant emigration in Germany. Section: German “lead aid” for the minorities in the countries of origin. In: Federal Center for Political Education. March 15, 2005, accessed January 3, 2018 .
- ^ Gerd Stricker: German history in Eastern Europe: Russia . Berlin. Siedler-Verlag 1997
- ↑ Pavel Lokshin: How many Russian speakers live in Germany? . Mediendiest integration . April 21, 2017
- ↑ Rainer Lehni: German repatriates are not migrants . Transylvanian Newspaper . April 5, 2011
