By the early 1970s the unbridled economic growth that had accompanied the rebuilding of Germany had come to a halt. Recession, inflation, and rising unemployment became the economic watchwords in Germany and, indeed, throughout the West. The guest workers who had arrived in the previous decades did not, however, leave once economic conditions changed. Despite official policy to the contrary, many guest workers put down roots in Germany, starting families and building communities. This combination of economic hard times and the increasingly apparent reality that former guest workers and their families intended to become permanent residents fueled widespread anti-immigrant sentiment in Germany. This 1982 manifesto, authored by a group of leading German academics, captures prevailing German attitudes toward immigration in the 1970s and early 1980s.

We are observing a development with great concern, a development initiated by a euphorically optimistic economic policy that has resulted in a state of affairs in which approximately 5 million guest workers and their families are now living and working in our country. Obviously, it has not been possible to halt the influx, despite a moratorium on recruitment. In 1989 alone, the number of registered foreigners rose by 309,000; 194,000 of those were Turks.

The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that little more than half of the necessary amount of children are being born in order to maintain zero growth of the German population in West Germany. A renewal of the procreative function of the German family is urgently needed.

Many Germans already feel foreign in their own neighborhoods, workplaces, and homeland in general — just as foreign as the guest workers are in their new surroundings.

The government’s decision to promote the influx of foreigners in an era of unbridled economic growth is now widely recognized as questionable. Up to this point, the German population has not been informed of the significance and consequences of this process. We believe that the establishment of a politically independent consortium is necessary, one that will work in dialogue with politicians toward a (preferably) universal solution. This problem must be resolved if it is not to become a fateful impasse for guest workers as well as the host country.

One complication in the search for a solution to this problem is the fact that one can no longer pose the necessary questions in public debate without incurring accusations of Nazism. For this reason, we must stress that we stand firmly on the foundation of the Basic Law in all our efforts toward a solution. We emphatically oppose ideological nationalism, racism, right- and left-wing extremism.

The integration of large masses of non-German foreigners is not possible without threatening the German people, language, culture, and religion. Every people, including the Germans, has a natural right to preserve its identity and character in its residential areas. Respect for other peoples necessitates their preservation as well, not their assimilation (“Germanization”). We perceive Europe as an industrious community of peoples and nations that gives rise to a coherent higher order through culture and history. As Solzhenitsyn suggests, “Every nation is a one-time facet of a divine plan.” On April 5, 1981, the voters of a multiracial nation, Switzerland, approved a model.

Although we know about the abuse of the word Volk, we must remind the reader that the Basic Law emanates from the term Volk, indeed from the German Volk, and that the federal president and the members of the government take this oath: “I swear that I will dedicate my energies to the good of the German Volk, further its interests, and prevent injury to it.” Whoever understands this oath cannot deny that it is the German people whose “preservation” is at stake. And those who decide that there are no peoples worth preserving disregard the rules of scientific hermeneutics and grossly misinterpret our concerns.

We do not hesitate to remind you that the goal of reunification — an obligation established in the preamble of the Basic Law — could be most grievously endangered through the current foreigner policy.

How is reunification to remain a possibility when many regions of Germany are becoming ethnically foreign? What hope for the future do the hundreds of thousands of guest-worker children have if they are illiterate in both their native language and German? What hope do our own children have when they are being educated predominantly in classes with foreigners? Only active and viable German families can preserve our people for the future.

Technological advancement continues to offer various possibilities to make the employment of guest workers superfluous. The highest priority of economic management must be to bring machines to people, not people to machines. Solving this problem means improving the living conditions of the guest workers in their own countries through targeted development assistance — not here with us. Reuniting guest workers with their families in the ancestral homeland — on a voluntary basis, of course — will relieve the burden on our overindustrialized country, a country suffering from environmental destruction.

Almost none of the responsible persons or the functionaries from prominent social institutions have dared to face facts, let alone to propose a realistic concept for a long-term policy. To this end, we believe the formation of a politically independent consortium is necessary, one that will encourage organizations, associations, and individuals to collaboratively dedicate themselves to the preservation of our people — its language, culture, religion, and way of life.

We as university instructors, a profession with lofty tasks and responsibilities that compel us to ensure an appropriate and reasonable education for foreigners in our country (especially those from the so-called third world), must, on the grounds of our professional legitimacy, point out the seriousness of the current situation and the menacing consequences of a trend already under way.

Source: Deniz Göktürk, David Gramling, and Anton Kaes, eds., Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 1955–2005 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 111–113.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER