Debate Over Tolerance Hangs Over Germany

In a country where the Constitution is a paean to political correctness but the soul is often a place of quiet prejudice, Axel Honneth packed his pipe with plum-scented tobacco and ventured into the tricky realm of Germany’s struggle with racial tolerance.

“Germans have a certain joy about cultural plurality, but then there’s this other intriguing thing,” said Honneth, a philosophy professor at Goethe University in Frankfurt. “A colleague of mine lives in a village. He feels irritated by the Turks in the neighborhood. He doesn’t like the way Turkish men treat their women or how loud their children are. He’s a leftist, but he’s highly irritated. To learn tolerance is difficult.”

The debate over tolerance is a constant hum in a nation where police guard synagogues from neo-Nazis and a Muslim teacher is fighting in the courts for the right to wear a headscarf in school. The struggle for nondiscrimination is the plot of one of Germany’s most famous plays, “Nathan the Wise,” written in 1779 by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and nearly always in production somewhere in the country because its Jewish protagonist symbolizes racial and religious harmony.

Many nations are burdened with racism and religious bigotry. But the imprint of the Holocaust makes the debate on such issues here unique. To the dismay of younger Germans -- seeking distance from a past they believe their nation has atoned for -- the goal of a tolerant society seems intertwined with the crimes of the Nazi era. This has made Germany a land of legislated morality and endless introspection as it balances nationalistic pride with wider cultural acceptance.

“Germans are better at tolerance today because of the democratic process,” said Wolf Dieter Otto, a German literature teacher at Bayreuth University. “But it’s a never-ending process. We must work on pluralism and integration. Many Germans still believe in a cultural sense that Germany is a country only for Germans.”

The Interdisciplinary Institute of Conflict and Violence Research at Bielefeld University is conducting a 10-year national study on racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Preliminary results suggest a “syndrome of hostile mentalities” in this country. The study found that 55% believe that too many foreigners live in Germany; 52% believe that Jews use the Holocaust “for their own advantage”; and 46% don’t approve of women wearing headscarves for religious reasons.

The study is focusing on how job insecurity, the feeling of political powerlessness and other factors contribute to prejudice and anger toward minorities and women. “We are faced more urgently than ever,” the survey states, “with the unsolved cardinal issue of a new culture of recognition for all who live in this society.”

Earlier this year, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s government signed a treaty with the German Jewish Council, which represents the nation’s estimated 100,000 Jews. The document states that Germany will preserve Jewish culture and make annual contributions of 3 million euros (about $3.4 million) to the Jewish community. The agreement came months after government concern: A rise in anti-Semitism had prompted Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to proclaim that this “cannot be permitted to happen. Not in Germany.”

As Germany assumes increased global stature, the public has shown that it has made a break with the bigotry of the past. What many political commentators viewed as a veiled campaign of anti-Semitism resulted in a sweeping defeat of the rightist Free Democrats in the last federal elections. And leftist anarchists opposed to right-wing extremism routinely storm neo-Nazi rallies and scuffle with skinheads.

“Sadly enough, though, German Jews are still viewed as Israelis,” said Sacha Stawski, a founder of Honestly Concerned, an organization that tracks anti-Semitism. “Many Germans when they talk to Jews say, ‘Oh, have you been home lately?’ They mean Israel.”

Nationalism for many Germans is so deep, Stawski added, “that unless you’re Aryan, you are a foreigner. It’s a strange mix. More foreigners than ever are living in Germany, but on the other hand, there is more hatred.”

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, tested tolerance toward Germany’s estimated 3 million Muslims when it was learned that Mohamed Atta and other Al Qaeda operatives had used the port city of Hamburg as a base before heading for the U.S. Dozens of raids by police and security forces on ethnic neighborhoods led to allegations by Arabs and Turks -- who immigrated here after World War II as guest workers -- of racial profiling and discrimination.

The Islamic headscarf is another sensitive dilemma in the battle for cultural acceptance.

Fereshta Ludin is arguing in the constitutional court for the right to wear a headscarf when she teaches classes. A German citizen of Afghan heritage, Ludin has been barred from teaching in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg because an education minister believes that the headscarf symbolizes discrimination against women and would be disturbing to students from other religious backgrounds.

“I see no discrepancy between Islam and the values of freedom and democracy,” Ludin was quoted in the German press as saying before a recent hearing. Judge Winfried Hassemer said the court will determine whether the headscarf is “just a piece of clothing, a symbol of religious attitude or a sign of refusal to integrate.”

A court decided last year that Germany’s laws on religious freedom gave a Turkish woman the right to wear a headscarf to her job in a department store. In an opinion piece in Der Tagesspiegel, former Judge Jost Mueller-Neuhof wrote that many Germans want the court’s decision on the headscarf to “say where tolerance may have its limits” and how much “diversity a society endures.”

Those questions have been the hallmark of the German debate for centuries. A center for an 18th century intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment, Germany fostered principles of freedom and equality based on secularism instead of religion. But the country -- as did much of Europe -- widely discriminated against Jews and foreigners. By the 1930s, Adolf Hitler’s manipulation of nationalism resulted in the Holocaust.

“Germans will never escape the crisis of identity found in the Holocaust,” said Gary Smith, executive director of the American Academy in Berlin. “Germany is a country in perpetual search of its identity.”

The German Constitution ratified in 1949 is a poetic treatise on tolerance and equality. “Human dignity,” it states, “shall be inviolable.” Recently, a court upheld those values when it ruled that Uwe Bergmann had the right to fly the rainbow flag, a symbol of homosexuality, from his balcony despite orders from his landlord to take it down.

With a history of xenophobia and anti-Semitism, however, Germany constantly struggles with those ideals. Recently, a man wearing a Star of David pendant was beaten and spat upon by youths on a Berlin bus.

An undercurrent of animosity has intensified in a troubled economy with an unemployment rate of about 10% and a fear among many Germans that their generous welfare state is shrinking. More than 66% of the population “rate the economic situation in Germany as bad,” according to the Bielefeld study. “And almost 30% say the same about their own financial situation.... Nearly 74% think that social relations are becoming increasingly frail.”

Questions of racial and religious tolerance are becoming frequent in Germany, said Honneth, the philosophy professor.

Europe is integrating; its borders are more open. Germany has a very low fertility rate and a rapidly aging population. Foreigners will be needed for jobs and development, and new cultures will brush against existing ones.

“There’s problems ahead of us,” Honneth said. “There’s globalization and growth of immigration. Germany will have to be more tolerant. It starts with things like changing laws so stores can be open on Sunday to cater to Muslims. Or how different cultures are portrayed in the media, and how schools teach about different religions.

“The debate is already starting.”