Xenophobia In Dresden, Germany?

[Richard]

NOTE: I spent a lot of time in Eastern Germany after the Wall fell and we were busily preparing for the withdrawl of the GSFG, the end of the DDR, and the unification of East and West Germany. Hopes were high - but so was unemployment amongst the Ossies and a growing sense of anger towards the Wessies and the many socialist brethren (foreigners from countries like Vietnam, Angola, Yemen) who had been studying or living in the DDR's socialist paradise when the on-rush of unforeseeable events of 1989-1990 took place. Within a short period of time, the resurgence of ultra-right extremist movements began and has been a problem for Germany since. Areas around Leipzig, Cotbus, Dresden, Chemnitz, and Rostock have particularly active extremist groups.

And so it goes...

Richard

In Dresden, High Culture and Ugly Reality Clash
Michael Kimmelman, NYT, 14 Aug 2009

In early July thousands of mourners took to the streets in Egypt, chanting “Down with Germany.” Thousands more Arabs and Muslims joined them in protests in Berlin. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad added to the outcry by denouncing German “brutality.”

The provocation was the murder on July 1 of Marwa al-Sherbini, a pregnant Egyptian pharmacist here. She was stabbed 18 times in a Dresden courtroom, in front of her 3-year-old son, judges and other witnesses, reportedly by the man appealing a fine for having insulted Ms. Sherbini in a park. Identified by German authorities only as a 28-year-old Russian-born German named Alex W., he had called Ms. Sherbini an Islamist, a terrorist and a slut when she asked him to make room for her son on the playground swings. Ms. Sherbini wore a head scarf.

The killer also stabbed Elwi Okaz, Ms. Sherbini’s husband and a genetic research scientist, who was critically wounded as he tried to defend her. The police, arriving late on the scene, mistook him for the attacker and shot him in the leg.

More than a week passed before the German government, responding to rising anger across the Arab world, expressed words of sorrow while stressing that the attack did occur during the prosecution of a racist and that the accused man was originally from Russia.

Dresden is one of the great cultural capitals of Europe. It is also the capital of Saxony, a former part of East Germany that, along with having a reputation as Silicon Saxony, has made more than a few headlines in recent years for incidents of xenophobia and right-wing extremism. One wonders how to reconcile the heights of the city’s culture with the gutter of these events.

This year’s annual report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, showed that far-right crime rose last year by 16 percent across the country. Most of these offenses were classified as propaganda crimes — painting swastikas on Jewish headstones or smashing the windows of restaurants run by immigrants — but politically motivated violent acts like murder, arson and assault accounted for 1,042 of the nearly 20,000 crimes recorded, a rise of 6.3 percent over 2007.

And these violent crimes turned out to be far more commonplace in parts of the former East Germany. Saxony, with roughly 5 percent of the country’s population, accounted for 12 percent of the violence classified as far right in nature, the report said.

These days Dresden’s center, once obliterated by Allied bombs, is a marvel of civility, a restored Baroque fairyland surrounded by Socialist-era and post-Socialist-era sprawl. The rebuilt Frauenkirche, the great Baroque cathedral where Bach played, again marks the skyline with its bell-shaped dome, as it did for centuries.

The ruin of the Frauenkirche became a gathering spot for protests against the East German regime during Communist times. In February, as usual on the anniversary of the Allied air raids, neo-Nazis marched through the streets. Some 7,500 of them carried banners condemning the “bombing holocaust.” They were outnumbered, Spiegel Online reported, by anti-Nazi demonstrators, but 7,500 was nonetheless twice as many neo-Nazis as showed up last year.

The other day only the benign clop-clop of horse-drawn carriages sounded across the cobblestone square outside the cathedral, the carriages bouncing camera-toting tourists past high-end jewelry shops and overpriced cafes. Nearby, the Zwinger palace, perhaps the most beautiful of all Baroque complexes, attracted the usual supplicants to Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, which was paired in the Gemäldegalerie with an African sculpture.

Germany is now a bastion of democracy in the heart of Europe. But the far right is on the rise across the Continent, and xenophobia is gaining in this country, not least among youth and not least singling out Muslims. A recent two-year government survey of 20,000 German teenagers classified one in seven as “highly xenophobic” and another 26.2 percent as “fairly xenophobic.”

“It was known that the figures were high,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said. “But I’m appalled that they’re this high.”

The newspaper Tagesspiegel reported that Alex W. asked Ms. Sherbini in the courtroom, “Do you have a right to be in Germany at all?” before warning her that “when the N.D.P. comes to power, there’ll be an end to that.”

“I voted N.D.P..,” he added.

No surprise.

The far-right National Democratic Party, a marginal but noisy troublemaker on the German political scene with a tiny official membership (some 7,000), is as strong in Saxony as it is anywhere. Recent polls have routinely shown its support in the state as nearing 10 percent of the population; it claims 8 seats out of the 124 in the state parliament in Dresden. On Tuesday the party issued a statement calling for a black politician, Zeca Schall, working on regional elections in Thuringia for the ruling Christian Democratic Union, “to head home to Angola.” Thuringia should “remain German,” the statement said. Mr. Schall, Angolan-born, has lived in Thuringia, another region in the former East, since 1988.

High-tech industries and research institutes like the one where Ms. Sherbini’s husband works, which recruit foreign experts, have lifted Dresden economically above much of the rest of the former East, and last year nearly 10 million tourists fattened the city’s coffers. With half a million residents, some 20,000 of them foreigners, the capital looks prosperous and charming, like its old self.

All of which gets back to the problem of reconciliation: What are the humanizing effects of culture?

Evidently, there are none.

To walk through Dresden’s museums, and past the young buskers fiddling Mozart on street corners, is to wonder whether this age-old question may have things backward. It presumes that we’re passive receivers acted on by the arts, which vouchsafe our salvation, moral and otherwise, so long as we remain in their presence. Arts promoters nowadays like to trumpet how culture helps business and tourism; how teaching painting and music in schools boosts test scores. They try to assign practical ends, dollar values and other hard numbers, never mind how dubious, to quantify what’s ultimately unquantifiable.

The lesson of Dresden, which this great city unfortunately seems doomed to repeat, is that culture is, to the contrary, impractical and fragile, helpless even. Residents of Dresden who believed, when the war was all but over, that their home had somehow been spared annihilation by its beauty were all the more traumatized when, in a matter of hours, bombs killed tens of thousands and obliterated centuries of humane and glorious architecture.

The truth is, we can stare as long as we want at that Raphael Madonna; or at Antonello da Messina’s “St. Sebastian,” now beside a Congo fetish sculpture in another room in the Gemäldegalerie; or at the shiny coffee sets, clocks and cups made of coral and mother-of-pearl and coconuts and diamonds culled from the four corners of the earth in the city’s New Green Vault, which contains the spoils of the most cultivated Saxon kings. But it won’t make sense of a senseless murder or help change the mind of a violent bigot.

What we can also do, though, is accept that while the arts won’t save us, we should save them anyway. Because the enemies of civilized society are always just outside the door.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/ar...er=rss&emc=rss

[frostfire]

All of which gets back to the problem of reconciliation: What are the humanizing effects of culture?

I was tracking until this point. Art is part of culture, but where/how/why does art exactly enter the problem? I may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but that part seems to just appear out of nowhere and rather forced, even with Dresden being the Grand Art Capital of the Elbe

[blue902]

The police, arriving late on the scene, mistook him for the attacker and shot him in the leg.

...good thing the cops weren't racists...

and

Recent polls have routinely shown [NDP] support in the state as nearing 10 percent of the population

10% is a negligible fringe element?

[mojaveman]

Interesting read.

It's sad because neither of the people involved in the incident are originally from Germany.

In two weeks I'll be in Dresden for a few days on vacation.

The German Government doesn't put up with the Neos. While I was living in East Germany a battalion sized element marched through town one day to demonstrate. The Police response looked like a small scale military invasion. There was a helicopter, armored cars with water cannons, and more K-9 teams with large German Shepherds than I have ever seen in my life. The Polizei like using dogs. It was actually a little amusing because there were a number of counter demonstrators, mostly young punk rockers and goths, who began throwing cobblestones and beer bottles at the Neos. I was riding on the Strassenbahn when it was unable to proceed and had to dismount right in the middle of the affair.

[Geenie]

Originally Posted by blue902

10% is a negligible fringe element?

While I agree that these figures should not be taken likely, I hope you noted the context. The article refers to 10% of the population of Saxony, not Germany. Regardless, the statistics are indeed alarming.

Originally Posted by mojaveman

The German Government doesn't put up with the Neos. While I was living in East Germany a battalion sized element marched through town one day to demonstrate. The Police response looked like a small scale military invasion.

I can attest to this. Nazi rallies always bring about a large police presence, which is also due to the fact that there are almost always large counter-demonstrations.
Police are usually quite professional in handling these demonstrations. Here is a video of an encounter that got a little out of hand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fitl4ARpIc

[Richard]

Under the Grundgesetz (Basic Law or Constitution), using Nazi symbols and slogans is a punishable crime in Germany. But now neo-Nazis may have more leeway after a federal German court ruled that slogans are not illegal if they are translated into another language. Amazing.

Richard

Lost In Translation: English Nazi Slogans Are Legal, German Court Rules
Der Spiegel, 13 Aug 2009

Is a Nazi slogan still a Nazi slogan if it is uttered in English instead of German? Not necessarily -- at least according to Germany's Federal Court of Justice.

In a landmark decision Thursday, the Karlsruhe-based court ruled that using Nazi slogans translated into a language other than German would not, in general, be a punishable crime.

The ruling is linked to a case in which a neo-Nazi was prosecuted and fined €4,200 ($6,000) in 2005 for distributing clothing and merchandising bearing the slogan "Blood and Honour," written in English. With the ruling, the court overturned the verdict against the neo-Nazi, who was not named, but said it could still be possible to prosecute him under other laws relating to right-wing extremism.

Although "Blood and Honour," which is also the name of a banned far-right organization, alludes to the Hitler Youth motto "Blut und Ehre," the court ruled that translating the words represented a "fundamental change" in the slogan, meaning its use was no longer punishable under German law. The judges said that Nazi slogans were characterized not only by their actual meaning but also by the fact that they were in German.

Senior judge Jörg-Peter Becker said that the court "is aware that its decision gives neo-Nazis a degree of leeway to translate their chants and slogans." However, he added that legislation by itself is not enough to eliminate Nazi ideas from public discourse.

Giving the Hitler salute or using symbols or slogans associated with "unconstitutional" organizations such as the Nazi party is a serious crime in Germany, punishable by up to three years in prison. In 2008, police launched an investigation after a senior member of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) draped a banned swastika flag across a coffin at a funeral.

[Team Sergeant]

Xenophobia In Dresden, Germany

I don't agree.

I have worked with many "cultures" around the world including muslims.

I don't think there is fear, just a hate for an ideology that is inherently, brutal, violent, horrific, corrupt etc etc etc. And one that has attacked innocent humans all over the world. Some have had enough of the religion of peace.

I don't agree at all with your thread title.

Team Sergeant

[mike-munich]

Originally Posted by blue902

...good thing the cops weren't racists...

Oh, and BTW Mr. Lab, if you google the incident you'll find information (even on muslim and arab websites) that the husband of Marwa, Ali, was shot accidentally by one of our officers.

Pls. do your homework before posting B.S. Thank you.