The Myth of “Ethnic Conflict”

Beverly Crawford and Ronnie D. Lipschutz, (editors)

International and Area Studies Research Series/Number 98

1998

Reemerging Ethnic Politics in Germany: Far Right Parties and Violence

With the emergence of resentments over an increasing number of foreign residents onto the political agenda of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it seemed that even the most stable industrial democracies would not be spared the resurgence of ethnic politics accompanying the end of the cold war. In winter and spring 1989 the successes of far right political parties, particularly the Republikaner (REPs), brought the relationship between Germans and non-Germans to the center of the political arena. ₁ A few months later, as the authority of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) collapsed in the East and unification gained momentum, many feared the fluid situation would provide opportunity for political entrepreneurs on the extreme right to articulate the concerns of some in the new society for a reformulation of exclusive German nationalism. During the first year of German unity these fears remained unsubstantiated. Then, in fall 1991, far right parties pushed themselves and the ethnic boundaries of German society back to center stage with the entrance of another extreme right party, the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), into Bremen’s state parliament. This time, however, the electoral successes of far right parties were accompanied by a new development: a dramatic escalation of violence against many of Germany’s foreign residents. For another year the growing influence of far right parties and escalating violence against “foreigners” paralleled one another until fall/winter 1992–93, when both the fortunes of these parties and the level of violence abruptly began to decline.

This chapter traces the emergence and politicization of ethnic tensions in German society from the late 1980s through the early years of unification. It explains two very different outcomes in this process: the emergence of political entrepreneurs competing in the electoral process who advocated exclusive boundaries to German society, on the one hand, and the spontaneous eruption and “bandwagoning effects” of xenophobic violence, on the other. It attributes these differing outcomes to the changing institutional opportunities and constraints imposed on actors by the political system of the FRG during this period. Prior to fall 1989, the institutions of West German democracy did not prohibit entrepreneurs from exploiting political and social problems associated with rising immigration to provoke a nativist backlash. However, they did ensure that backlash remained contained within the rules of parliamentary democracy. Unification changed the course of events by transferring issues and debates about immigration from the tight constraints of West German society to the fluid environment in the East. This transfer resulted in an explosion of violence against “foreigners” throughout Germany. Finally, the eruption of violence itself brought movement among established actors in the German polity to reorganize and reaffirm key elements of the rules governing ethnic relations in the FRG, with the result that far right parties were pushed out of electoral politics and xenophobic violence was removed to the criminal margins of society.

The chapter is organized into three parts. The first part investigates the initial outcome in Germany’s ethnic relations: the electoral opportunity created for far right entrepreneurs by the dramatic rise of immigration to West German society during the 1980s. It discusses the legal and normative institutions that set parameters within which immigration became defined as an issue in the political arena. It then considers how these constraints shaped the choices of established political parties in the FRG on issues associated with immigration. Finally, it demonstrates how these established actors provided an opportunity for a new type of far right political party to capitalize electorally on the tensions produced by the rising number of foreigners entering German society.

The second part focuses on the second outcome, or how unification changed the course of events to produce xenophobic violence. First, it considers the emergence of a fluid social environment in the East as institutional mechanisms of integration and social control collapsed together with the SED regime. Then it explains how the transfer of the inflammatory rhetoric of immigration and asylum from the West to the East generated a rapid escalation of xenophobic violence that spread across both parts of Germany.

Finally, the concluding section describes the response of actors in the German polity to xenophobic violence. Both established political parties and large numbers of citizens moved to reinforce certain rules about ethnic relations and change others, which resulted in the marginalization of xenophobic violence as well as far right parties.

Politicization of Immigration in the FRG at the End of the 1980s: Channeling Ethnic Tensions Into the Electoral Arena

External shocks, especially a rapid rise in the number of immigrants, brought ethnicity back to the center of West German politics at the end of the 1980s. This section traces the process by which immigration and relations between German and non-German residents were shaped politically and channeled into the electoral arena, with the result of temporarily opening an electoral opportunity for the REPs and other far right parties. In examining these processes, the section focuses on two sets of institutional parameters and the choices of political actors within them. First, it examines the constraints imposed by existing laws which embody three very different, even contradictory, views of the “proper” relationship among Germans, non-Germans, and state authorities. Second, it considers norms about the National Socialist (NS) past—which themselves find expression in legal statutes—as they constitute barriers to political appeals based on race and hierarchy. Finally, it looks at established political parties as strategic actors in an uncertain environment whose actions shape opportunities faced by others in the party system.

Immigration: The Boundaries of German Society and the Political Agenda

As was the case throughout Western Europe, rapidly rising numbers of immigrants during the 1980s prompted questions about the boundaries of society in the FRG into the political arena. ₂ The new arrivals presented a peculiar problem in the FRG. Even into the present, many German politicians claim, “Germany is not a country of immigration.” In fact, the FRG still makes no legal provisions for immigration. The lack of such regulations, therefore, shapes 1) the means that hundreds of thousands of people who annually seek entrance to West German society use to achieve this end, 2) the problems associated with this development, and 3) the manner in which political debates evolve around the issue.

Although the FRG has no immigration law, three other mechanisms create legal openings for those seeking residence in West German society. The first of these reflects the lasting legacy of West German recruitment of “guest workers” between the mid-1950s and the early 1970s. While recruitment of foreign workers was stopped in November 1973, government policies aimed at the integration of resident aliens permit family members and dependents to join resident guest workers in the FRG. ₃ As a result, these policies have brought about both continued growth and a changing composition in the guest worker population. ₄

To those in Eastern Europe who can demonstrate their German ethnicity, Article 116 of the Basic law (Grundgesetz) and the 1953 Federal Expellees and Refugees Law provide a second means of entrance to the Bundesrepublik. ₅ With Mikhail Gorbachev and the advent of glasnost, societies in Eastern Europe became more open not only to the internal flow of information, but also to the outward flow of emigrants. After 1986 the steady exodus of “ethnic Germans” from Eastern Europe to the FRG rapidly accelerated (see Table 1). Although demonstrating German ethnicity often required little more than a German name or a parent or grandparent with a German name—and little or no understanding of the German language—these “ethnic Germans” became citizens of the FRG upon arrival.

Table 1

Immigration into the Federal Republic during the 1980s

Year	Ethnic Germans (Aussiedler)	East Germans (Üabersiedler)	Asylum
1980	52,071	12,763	107,818
1981	69,455	13,208	49,391
1982	48,170	13,208	37,423
1983	37,925	11,343	19,737
1984	36,459	40,974	35,278
1985	38,968	24,912	73,832
1986	42,788	26,178	99,650
1987	78,523	18,958	57,379
1988	202,673	39,832	103,076
1989	377,055	343,854	121,318

Sources: For asylum applicants, 1980-89, see Ursula Munch, Asylpolitik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2d ed. (Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1993), p. 253; Klaus J. Bade, ed., Aktuell Kontrovers: Ausldnder, Aussiedler, Asyl in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2d ed. (Hannover: Niedersdchsishe Landeszentrale fur politische Bildung,1992), p. 30. For ethnic Germans and East Germans, 1985-89, see Barbara Marshall, "German Migration Policies," in Developments in German Politics, ed. G. Smith, W. Patterson, P. Merkl, and S. Padgett (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992), p. 249. For ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and those from the GDR for 1980-84, see Thomas Mayer, "Immigration into West Germany: Historical Perspectives and Policy Implications," in German Unification, Economic Issues, ed. Leslie Lipschitz and Donogh McDonald (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1990), p.131; International Monetary Fund Occasional Paper No. 75.

Note: These figures represent new arrivals, excluding entering dependents of resident guest workers. Further, this table does not indicate the number of resident aliens departing the FRG.

The final avenue of entrance into West German society has become the most controversial. Article 16 of the West German Basic Law guarantees those who are “politically persecuted” a subjective right to asylum. ₆ State authorities were required to hear all claims to asylum, and applicants could demand access to the legal system if they felt decisions in their case were made unjustly. Thus by the end of the 1980s, the reunification of guest worker families, the liberalization of conditions for ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe, and the asylum guarantee in Article 16—complemented by liberal access to judicial review of petitions—were providing several hundred thousand newcomers temporary or permanent residence in the FRG each year.

Accompanying this inflow was a catalogue of economic, social, and fiscal problems which ensured that immigration, in one form or another, would find its way onto the agenda of party politics. New arrivals in all of the above categories contributed to the general infrastructural problems associated with immigration: education, social services, and the difficulties of integration into housing and labor markets as well as in society generally. ₇ The arrival of ethnic Germans and asylum applicants, however, precipitated special problems. Responsibility for the housing and support of both groups was delegated to state and local authorities, for whom this became a large and increasingly visible fiscal and political burden. Resentments among Germans regarding the size of such expenditures were aggravated by the privileged access—sometimes above the level granted other citizens—ethnic Germans received to occupational retraining programs, public housing, subsidized loans, and cash grants. ₈ These highly visible demands by newcomers on the social product gave currency to potentially explosive political questions about who was entitled to enter German society and participate in the division of its welfare.

Institutional Topography of Immigration Politics

At the same time that a large and growing number of immigrants was entering West German society, immigration did not legally exist, so the influx of newcomers and the problems associated with them stood open to political definition as these developments were pushed onto the agenda of party politics. However, politicians seldom enjoy unrestricted freedom to choose how developments will be brought into the political arena. Rather, a set of contradictory attitudes concerning the relations of Germans, non-Germans, and public authority—embedded in German society and institutionalized in German law—defined the parameters within which immigration and its associated problems were thematized as issues on the agenda of interparty politics. This section presents these attitudes, their institutional reflection in German law, and the boundaries they set for the developments in question. For convenience only, these perspectives have been given the labels “ethnocultural,” “statist/communitarian,” and “liberal.”

More than the other two, the ethnocultural perspective shaped the politics of immigration at the end of the 1980s. ₉ At its philosophical core, this perspective rests not only on a belief in the nation or Volk as a constitutive entity reflected in language, culture, and history, but also on a strict demarcation of the boundaries between nations and peoples. The sticky problem historically has been whether these boundaries have been drawn according to psychological or biological lines. In a country like Germany, where this demarcation has evolved according to biological criteria, the logic of this perspective, taken to its extreme, holds that members of the community are born different and special and that the presence of nonmembers represents a dangerous dilution of that which makes the community unique. Although since the end of World War II public expression of such attitudes has entailed a serious risk of public and legal censoring, the ethnocultural perspective and biological definition of community boundaries remain firmly embedded in German law. The most prominent examples of this are the jus sanguinis regulation of citizenship, through the continued use of the 1913 citizenship law, and the extension of citizenship rights to “ethnic Germans” in Eastern Europe through Article 116 of the Basic Law.

While the inclusion of these regulations in the legal structure of the West German state reflected practical and even humanitarian considerations at the end of the war as much as a desire to maintain the ideal of a unified “ethnic” German nation after defeat and division, their persistence has, nonetheless, profoundly shaped the politics of immigration in the 1980s. ₁₀ This is seen most significantly in the situation obtaining in 1989, when no less than 7 percent of the resident population of the FRG lived without full rights of political participation. ₁₁ Not only blatantly undemocratic, this situation also created positive incentives for politicians to engage in the divisive politics of ethnic identity. Because foreign residents of the FRG who are not citizens of other European Union (EU) countries are at present unlikely to acquire either citizenship or the right to vote, politicians can engage in immigrant bashing without fear of electoral reprisal by immigrant voters.

The second perspective in German attitudes and laws governing the residence of foreign nationals reflects traditions of continental statism and communitarianism. From this point of view, lawmakers should be hesitant to codify the rights of individuals for fear that doing so might impede the attainment of a higher purpose—the realization of the raison d’état or “general will.” Instead, there is greater willingness to restrict individual rights in pursuit of social outcomes and to entrust state administrators with discretionary power to manage conflicts between individual and state or communal interests. The history of postwar West German attempts to regulate political asylum and guest workers is replete with legislation seeking to maximize the discretionary powers of state actors and to limit the ability of individuals to block administrative authority, particularly through judicial review. ₁₂ Prominent examples are the 1965 Foreigner Law (Ausländergesetz) and the 1992–93 change in the constitutional regulation of political asylum.

In the postwar decades of rapid economic growth, those working according to a statist/communitarian perspective introduced a deceptively simple calculus into the regulation of foreign nationals in German society. As guest workers represented the first large-scale influx of foreign nationals since the immediate postwar period, much of the foundation for the regulation of relations among Germans, foreigners, and public authority evolved from experience with them. During the years of the “economic miracle” it was easy to think of the presence of guest workers as a relatively simple affair: as long as they represented a net gain for the community—defined exclusively in short-term, material terms—they were tolerated. Should they become a burden, they would have to leave. ₁₃ Events in the 1970s dispelled both the illusion of uninterrupted economic growth—which conveniently concealed differences of interest between guest workers and other elements of West German society—and the belief that foreign labor could be managed purely as an industrial input. Persistent growth in the guest worker population, even after the 1973 recruitment stop, raised, among others, a troubling question: with what justification and at what price could human beings be excluded from full participation in a democratic society? By the 1970s, then, statist/communitarian regulations came in conflict with the last perspective.

The final set of attitudes informing the regulation of foreigners in the FRG and the evolving politics of immigration belongs to the liberal and humanist traditions of the Western democratic experience. Liberals and humanists advocate strong institutional mechanisms for the protection of individual rights against encroachment by either the state or social majorities. As in the constitutions of other Western parliamentary democracies, the FRG’s Basic Law contains articles guaranteeing certain fundamental individual rights to all on its territory, regardless of nationality. In the development of the politics of immigration, none has been more important than Article 16, which guarantees the politically persecuted a right to asylum, and Article 19, Paragraph 4, of the Basic Law, which ensures recourse to judicial review to individuals who feel their rights have been unjustly curtailed by administrative decision.

Conceived partly in atonement for the crimes of National Socialism, these articles have provided access to the physical security and material wealth of West German society to a great number of individuals. Many of these individuals were clearly entitled to political asylum under Article 16, and many were not. Liberal access to judicial review for all asylum applicants, however, has had the consequence that by the early 1980s the average length of asylum proceedings had stretched to longer than six years. ₁₄ During this time public resources finance not only housing and support for these individuals, but also the cost of legal proceedings themselves. As the number of applications increased, case backlogs swelled, reviews lengthened, and the asylum process became a steadily more attractive means of entrance to West German society. As this became a vicious cycle, resonance grew—first among state and local politicians and then in the broader public—for a halt to the “abuse” of Germany’s asylum laws. ₁₅

Because each is embedded in the legal structure of the FRG, these three perspectives represent the key topographical features of the arena in which the presence of foreigners became politicized at the end of the 1980s. As late as the early 1980s, these three principles coexisted tenuously in German politics and society without finding their way to the center of competition among the major political parties. Alone, undisguised appeals based on an ethnocultural vision of society were excluded from politics. By the mid-1980s mounting pressure to solve the problems associated with the rapidly rising number of immigrants forced politicians to search for ways to frame these developments politically. This process of politicization involved elevating certain interpretations of problems, along with policies to rectify them, while subordinating others. Before turning to the role of political parties in shaping the politics of immigration and relations between German and non-German residents, we must examine the powerful taboos about racism and the NS past, which also represent considerable constraints on possible outcomes in West German ethnic relations.

The Past as Constraint on the Politics of Ethnic Radicalism

As a result of history, exclusive nationalism and ethnic politics have become the intellectual property of the extreme right. Further—and also a result of history—nowhere else in Western Europe does past experience weigh so heavily against organized expressions of exclusive nationalism as in the FRG. Revulsion at the crimes of the NS era and Germany’s defeat, occupation, and dismemberment at the end of World War II are reflected not only in popular attitudes, but also in institutional norms and legal structures. These norms and laws severely circumscribe public space to the expression of such ideas, particularly when they are advocated by organizations. While these barriers have not precluded the existence of organizations—even far right political parties—holding such ideals, they channel their development in one of two directions. ₁₆ Such organizations must either move away from overt advocacy of racism and ethnic hierarchy or be pushed into a clandestine existence on the criminal margins of society. This section considers these social and legal barriers to the organized politics of ethnic exclusivity.

Both popular attitudes and rules of self-government within social organizations reflect the strength of norms condemning the Nazi past as a constraint on radical politics, particularly by ethnic entrepreneurs and far right parties. Observers of public opinion in the FRG note that public satisfaction with democratic institutions has risen parallel to a decline in the number of those voicing positive associations with the NS past. Further, because they exist in chronological juxtaposition with one another, support for the ideas and institutions of the FRG seems to be inextricably intertwined with rejection of National Socialism. Such developments represent a structural limitation on the electoral support for appeals based on exclusive nationalism even during periods of considerable institutional change. ₁₇ Moreover, such attitudes, especially since the late 1960s, have found nearly constant reinforcement in the rules and norms governing many important social organizations. For organizations associated with the political left, this is a matter of ideological course. However, even in organizations that are politically neutral or on the democratic right, one finds strict controls over flirtations with the intellectual property of the extreme right. Such controls in key social organizations contribute in turn to the creation of similar controls in other organizations, with the eventual effect of building an infrastructure of democratic civil society within which there are few enclaves where extreme nationalist and racist attitudes can be expressed openly.

In addition to the norms permeating popular attitudes and organizations, formal, legal restrictions on the content of political messages circumscribe the room for maneuver of radical political organizations. Three articles of the Basic Law set tight legal boundaries on the behavior of political organizations operating at the fringes of democracy. Article 18 permits the restriction of the civil rights of those who would turn the freedoms of conscience, unrestricted dissemination of ideas, and association against the “basic order of freedom and democracy.” Article 9, Paragraph 2, grants state and federal interior ministries authority to disband associations whose purpose or activities operate contrary to law, the constitutional order, or the reconciliation of different peoples. Finally, Article 21, Paragraph 2, provides for the proscription as “unconstitutional” of any political party that, according to the behavior of its members, seeks to undermine or eliminate the basic order of freedom and democracy or that endangers the existence of the FRG. ₁₈ These limitations have been refined and extended by the rulings of the Federal Constitutional Court against extremist organizations of both the political right and left. The enforcement of these regulations demonstrates that a measure of conformity to certain ground rules is a prerequisite of existential importance to extremist parties in the FRG.

While not eliminating the politics of ethnicity altogether, these constraints push the development of ethnic politics, and the political organizations that would capitalize on them, along two divergent courses. Explicit association of an organization with violence and/or the discredited racism and ideology of the NS past almost ensures that some combination of state authorities, other political parties, and even the broader electorate will move to drive it out of the political arena and out of existence or into the ghetto of clandestine Nazi and neo-Nazi politics. To avoid marginalization, far right parties and ethnic entrepreneurs must perform a most delicate—and perhaps impossible—balancing act. While avoiding explicit endorsement of violence, racism, and NS ideology, they must also differentiate themselves from parties of the democratic right, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU), on the basis of concrete issues. Consequently, the chances for such entrepreneurs to win votes outside a core of ideologically motivated voters, of far less than the 5 percent threshold necessary for parliamentary representation, remain hostage to the choices of other actors—primarily other parties—within the electoral system. Rarely do established actors intentionally leave open space on an issue hospitable to ethnic entrepreneurs. However, with the politicization of immigration at the end of the 1980s, such a configuration did emerge.

The Electoral Outcome: Opening Political Space for Far Right Parties on Immigration

Given the narrowly defined room for maneuver of far right organizations, the politicization of the FRG’s ethnic tensions in the form of electorally competitive far right parties at the end of the 1980s seems unlikely. To understand how this came to be, it is necessary to consider the actions of established political parties on issues surrounding immigration within the constraints outlined above. This section describes the role of both strategic choices made by established parties and the consequences of those choices—whether intentional or unintentional—in creating an electoral space for far right parties to capitalize on the tensions arising from immigration. Because the existence of a potential does not ensure that it will be exploited, a brief account will be given of the entrepreneurial character of the FRG’s far right parties, particularly the REPs.

The absence of legal avenues for immigration, or even a public discussion that West Germany might be a “land of immigration,” left open the political definition of problems arising from the annual influx of hundreds of thousands of people. But even as the weight of numbers assured that these problems would find their way onto the political agenda, it was up to elected political representatives to frame them as issues and propose solutions to deal with them. Here the immigration issue became the subject of one of the dilemmas that has arisen out of the declining ideological distance that separates major parties and their voters not only in the FRG, but also in many Western industrial societies. As polarized ideological interpretations of the world wane, large parties have increasingly laid their claim to political power in the capacity to manage economic and social problems. Simultaneously, such problems, including immigration, have become sufficiently complex to defy solution by the means readily available. However, under the pressure of electoral competition, can any party—government or opposition—admit its uncertainty or helplessness in the face of an important problem without appearing inept or handing its political adversaries an electoral advantage? ₁₉ Because immigration in the FRG was embedded in this dilemma, established parties confronted the strategic choice between recognizing the complexity of issues and seeking a nonpartisan, long-term solution—hoping political competitors would cooperate—and preempting the adversary and forsaking long-term solutions to maximize short-term political gain (or at least minimize short-term losses). While the outlines of this choice seemed clear, actors could not anticipate all the consequences of one choice or another. The following examines first the choice of the CDU/CSU (“Union” for short) on issues of immigration and then the consequences of these choices for others in the political system.

During the latter part of the 1980s elements within the CDU/CSU sought to define the growing influx of foreigners into West German society as the result of a “misuse” of the FRG’s liberal regulation of political asylum. According to this formula, those entering by this means were at best economic refugees, but more likely they were merely individuals seeking to exploit German prosperity and a generous welfare system. The solution offered by Union politicians, therefore, was to change the constitutional provisions for asylum. In binding “misuse” to a position demanding change in the constitutional rules for asylum, the Union drew a line of conflict between the values of statist/communitarians and those of liberals. Thus immigration was raised immediately from an issue that had separated elected representatives at different levels of the federal system to the agenda of intra- and interparty politics.

While initially a CSU response to a local challenge from the Bavarian Republikaner, the Union’s position was also calculated to electorally neutralize its major competitor, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), on the issue of immigration. Changing constitutional provisions for asylum required a two-thirds majority and therefore opposition support. Union willingness to sacrifice the liberal principles contained in Article 16 was calculated to aggravate the always tense relations between the defenders of liberal, humanist values and the more statist/communitarian-oriented Social Democrats within the SPD. The inevitable deadlock between groups within the SPD, so Union strategists calculated, would then have the effect of alienating those voters, particularly in urban districts, who were confronted on a daily basis with the social and fiscal consequences of immigration. It was assumed that the Union, on the other hand, could posture itself as the responsible party, offering a programmatic response to these problems, only to be blocked by the obstructionism of an opposition without an alternative.

Convincing evidence for the primacy of electoral concerns over the desire to manage problems of immigration is offered in the striking contrast between Union attacks on asylum-seekers and the policy of Helmut Kohl’s government toward “ethnic Germans” from Eastern Europe. Under the Special Program for Aussiedler, from August 1988 “ethnic Germans” gained unrestricted entry to the FRG and access to public resources equal to native West Germans. ₂₀ This was done in spite of the fact that 1) most Germans considered the new arrivals from Eastern Europe—more than 80 percent of whom spoke no German whatsoever—at least as foreign as most asylum applicants, and 2) in 1988 twice as many “ethnic Germans” entered the FRG with the aid of government policy as asylum-seekers entered by means of Article 16. In 1989 the number of “ethnic Germans” was three times as high (see Table 1). However, unlike a change in Article 16, controlling the flow of “ethnic Germans” and the demands they placed on the resources of state and society did not require a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Of course, these East Europeans tended to be religious, conservative, and hold patriarchal values, which might incline them to vote for the Union. ₂₁

Union efforts to focus public attention on the “misuse” of asylum produced several consequences, none of which was fully intended. First, in a climate where asylum-seekers were portrayed as an undeserving burden, not only distinctions between different groups of foreign residents, but also distinctions between different justifications for the reform of the legal avenues of entrance into the FRG began to erode. In formal justifications for reform, Union politicians emphasized West Germany’s limited fiscal capacity to manage a potentially limitless “flood” of foreigners. ₂₂ Asylum reform was presented as a practical necessity dictated by the problem of limited material resources. However, while arguments about limited capacity rest on a statist/communitarian logic, the rhetoric of “misuse” injected a chauvinist element into public discussions. Asylum applicants were not presented as humans who, for whatever reason, were leaving their homes behind, but as frauds and even parasites sapping the affluence and security created by German society. Such statements leave little distance between themselves and perspectives that would attribute the prosperity of (West) German society to some fortuitous characteristic of Germans that is lacking in other races or cultures. In short, the inflammatory rhetoric of some Union politicians bridged across the debates of acceptable politics—between libertarian concerns for individual constitutional rights and the needs of the state or national community—to the racial and cultural hierarchies espoused by far right groups.

A second consequence of the “misuse” campaign was also not precisely what Union politicians had planned. The challenge to Article 16 did produce the expected conflict between the defenders of different values within the SPD. Further, the inability to resolve the internal party controversy did drive a wedge between the Social Democrats and some voters concerned with the problems of immigration. However, in spite of internal divisions, the SPD was able to damage Union credibility on the problems of immigration. Social Democrats assaulted Union responsibility for swelling numbers of “ethnic Germans” from Eastern Europe, demanding a revision of Article 116. As neither side could implement reforms over the objections of the other, the West German electorate was treated to the unseemly spectacle of its elected representatives engaged in a series of transparent electoral maneuvers, in which the various categories of foreign residents were reduced to pawns. Consequently a very visible and damaging deadlock developed at the center of the political system.

Through the environment of inflamed rhetoric and political deadlock, the “misuse” campaign had a third unintended consequence. Far right organizations acquired an opportunity to transcend the politics of the radical right ghetto. In their defense of Article 116 and their rhetorical tenor, Union politicians found themselves in the uncomfortable position of narrowing the ideological ground between themselves and parties of the extreme right. More important, they also gave the far right a concrete issue with which to differentiate themselves from the CDU/CSU. To Union critiques that they were the peddlers of discredited ideas from the past, far right politicians could respond—albeit disingenuously—that it was not they who were defending the legal notion of a Volk by letting in hundreds of thousands of “ethnic Germans” who understood neither the language nor the culture of the FRG. ₂₃ At the same time, the large parties’ inability to formulate a concrete policy on immigration offered far right parties a chance to assume a populist stance vis-à-vis not only the Union, but also the party system as a whole. Against the backdrop of legislative gridlock, far right politicians portrayed themselves as the representatives of the common people against a uniformly cynical and corrupt political class. With a small measure of authenticity, they could claim the issue was not “asylum applicants” or “ethnic Germans”—these were labels that interested professional politicians, not common people—but rather too many foreigners. Far from offering an outlet for voters to make an abstract or ill-defined protest, far right parties focused electoral dissatisfaction on a concrete issue and the real shortcomings of the political system in dealing with immigration. ₂₄

As noted, the presence of opportunity offered no guarantee that political organizations of the far right would be prepared to exploit it. It was the innovation of the REPs to seek explicitly to maintain distance in public between themselves and statements of ideology, use of Nazi symbols, and—especially—any association with violence. With mixed success, the REPs sought to adapt right extremism to the rules of parliamentary democracy. Borrowing an innovation of the French Nouvelle Droite, the REPs were careful to couch their objections to foreigners in German society in the language of culture and values, thereby skirting the stigmatizing issue of racism. ₂₅ To preempt official and popular suspicions about personal links between the party and other far right organizations, Paragraph 3 of the REP party statute excludes from membership the functionaries of any political organization considered anticonstitutional or radical. ₂₆ However, the need to bind the loyalties of committed far right activists and to create an appearance of respectability before the public created too many inconsistencies and demanded a nearly untenable balancing act that the party leadership maintained with only limited success.

Neither the REPs nor the other far right parties successfully carved out a section of the West German electorate as their own hunting ground. Rather they collected a heterogeneous group of voters whose bonds with the other parties (CDU/CSU and SPD) had been loosened. ₂₇ Displaying a pattern of development found in the eletorate as a whole, where socioeconomic factors and party identification are becoming less and less tightly aligned, REP voters are not readily distinguishable from the electors of other parties according to demographic characteristics. Far right supporters are overwhelmingly male, more likely to have the minimum required formal education, and be workers or self-employed;28 however, REP supporters in 1989 could not easily be differentiated from the West German electorate in terms of age, confession, income, union membership, or home ownership. ₂₉

Where demographic traits fail to distinguish far right supporters, however, the subjective orientations of these voters present a more revealing picture. When asked to list spontaneously the most important political problems of the day, REP supporters responded most frequently “asylum-seekers” (34 percent), followed by “ethnic Germans” (26 percent). The most common responses among the sample as a whole were “environmental protection” (33 percent) and unemployment (29 percent). ₃₀ The reasons supporters listed for giving their votes to the REPs are also revealing in this sense. Eighty-two percent of REP supporters cast their vote for the party because of dissatisfaction with the other parties. ₃₁ Almost 90 percent of these voters saw the REPs as a party “that raised problems neglected by other parties.” ₃₂ Finally, 72 percent of REP voters gave as one of the main reasons for voting for the party “Because the REPs advocate solutions to the ‘foreigner problem.’” ₃₃ In these data it is clear that the problems of immigration—and more specifically the inability of the deadlocked political system to deal with them—presented far right parties a rare opportunity to extend their support by articulating and focusing the frustrations of many voters with established political representatives on a concrete issue.

The emergence of far right parties represents just one possible outcome for the way tensions growing out of the unsolved problems of immigration could be channeled into West German politics. Rising immigration during the 1980s spread serious social problems throughout West German society that would not be kept off the political agenda. While strong social norms and legal restrictions kept developments from turning violent, there was no guarantee that the tensions produced by immigration would not find reflection in electoral politics of ethnicity, as long as actors demonstrated a minimal conformity to taboos about racism and violence. In fact, the restrictive regulation of German citizenship and political participation provides no disincentive for such development. Politicians who exploit nativist frustrations with foreign residents—whether in established or far right parties—face no possibility of electoral punishment from naturalized voters.

Ultimately, however, established politicians bear responsibility for the emergence of identity politics in the form of far right parties. Faced with the complexity of immigration, these politicians had to decide between long-term bipartisan reform, on the one hand, or framing the issue to maximize immediate political advantage, on the other. The competitive nature of the electoral environment seemed to point to the prudence of the latter course. However, the Union’s choice to frame issues according to the formula of “misuse of asylum” and constitutional change created the polarized and deadlocked environment which opened a space in the otherwise narrow constraints imposed on the electoral efforts of far right parties. Furthermore, the successes of far right parties in spring 1989 had the effect of hastening internal realignment and strengthening advocates of a harder line on “foreigners” within the Union. ₃₄ Floating voters felt their votes for far right parties vindicated by the sudden attention they received from an otherwise unresponsive political class, and it is not clear whether movement by the Union would have recaptured these voters or consolidated the position of far right parties in a manner similar to the development of the National Front in France. In any case, a few months later unification dramatically changed the course of developments.

Immigration and Ethnic Tensions After Unification: The Eruption and Spread of Xenophobic Violence

German unification is sometimes described as a hostile corporate takeover where Western institutions and practices were simply extended eastward. This analogy is contradicted by the record of ethnic relations before and after unity. While far right parties re- emerged after more than a year of dormancy in some Western state and local elections after fall 1991, unification was accompanied by a different manifestation of ethnic tensions in German society, an explosion of violence against foreigners starting in summer 1991 (see Table 2). The collapse of the centralized SED regime and the accession of the newly reorganized East German states to the FRG through the provisions of Article 23 of the Basic Law created a completely new and fluid social environment onto which the institutions and practices of West German parliamentary democracy were superimposed. The injection of the same debates and issues concerning immigration into this new social environment created opportunities for a different type of actor—skinhead cliques—to produce a different type of outcome in the management of ethnic tensions: spontaneous attacks on foreign residents.

Table 2

Right Wing Violence, 1982-93

Year	Total (Number)	East Germany (Number)	Percent
1993	1,814		25
1992	2,584	865	33
1991	1,483	493	33
1990	270
Old FRG
1990	128
1989	103
1988	73
1987	76
1986	71
1985	69
1984	83
1983	67
1982	53

Source: Jens Alber, "Towards Explaining Anti-Foreign Violence in Germany" (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for European Studies, Harvard University, n.d.), table 1; Working Paper Series No. 53.

The investigation of the changing nature of ethnic relations in the FRG after unification proceeds in four sections. First, it considers the emergence of a turbulent social environment after the SED’s collapse and rapid unification. The second section examines the transfer of issues and debates surrounding immigration from the West to the East. The third looks at the actors who discovered an opportunity for themselves in this new situation. In the final section, the analysis demonstrates how opportunity and actors came together in one highly publicized incident of xenophobic violence in the Eastern city of Hoyerswerda and how this incident (and others like it) generated the bandwagoning effects which spread violence not only throughout the East, but to the West as well.

Collapse And Unification: The Disruption of State Control and Associational Life in the Eas

To understand why immigration produced such profoundly different consequences in ethnic relations before and after unity, some attention must be given to the social environment left in the wake of the collapse of the GDR and German unification. The transformation of Eastern society brought two developments that were important for the intitial eruption of violence. First, rapid reorganization precipitated a collapse of the organs of state control and social integration. At the same time, many East Germans were faced with a new and complex environment within which they were expected to make choices, even as many of the associations that had previously provided information and direction in this process were falling away. This lack of a comprehensive and authoritative network of institutions and associations, simultaneously binding citizens to society and subjecting them to state authority, distinguishes the postunification experience of East Germans from developments in the West prior to fall 1989 and provides the backdrop for the escalation of xenophobic violence.

While society in the GDR bore little resemblance to Western civil societies, for forty years centrally directed organizations integrated some East Germans into Leninist state-society and kept the rest under tight control. Starting in late summer 1989, however, nearly every form of organized social activity—from the center of the political system down to family life—underwent at least temporary disruption, weakening normative and coercive controls over individual behavior. The following considers the consequences for social controls of the administrative reorganization of the East and the introduction of the Social Market Economy.

The collapse of centralized control by the SED produced three patterns of administrative transformation which had the effect of eliminating or undermining the authority of state controls. First, at the extremes of the old system—at the political center and in local administration and production—old organizations collapsed. The record of forty years of absolute power eliminated all credibility from the party’s claim to the right to exercise central political authority. Power devolved rapidly from the party center, first to other points within the party organization, then to citizens’ groups outside the party, and finally to other parties backed by Western sponsors. ₃₅ At the local level, the departure of more than 400,000 East Germans who fled the GDR between late 1989 and early 1990 left behind often insurmountable gaps in production, administration, and the provision of services. ₃₆ While other organizations filled the vacuum at the political center, many of the social and economic holes at the local level remain unfilled long after unification.

Two other patterns of transformation contributed to the weakness of those institutions which emerged out of the turbulence of unification. First, some elements of the old administration—particularly local government and services—remained in place, but with their effectiveness undermined by association with the old regime. This was particularly true of police and courts which faced—not unsubstantiated—accusations of systematic collaboration with the secret police. Thus not only unfamiliarity with a new legal framework, but also a social environment hostile to official authority threw up obstacles to the enforcement of a newly proclaimed “rule of law.” ₃₇

Second, where important institutions collapsed or were too compromised to remain under old management, organizations from the West replaced them. This is true of unions, industrial management, and political parties. ₃₈ These institutions obtained material and personnel resources from the West, and their authority came not so much as the local and spontaneous representatives of interests in East Germany, but from the faith that they were responsible for stability and prosperity in the West and that they would recreate these conditions in the East. Insofar as they were staffed by Westerners and seen as acting in accordance with directives from the West, these organizations maintained an alien presence, limiting their influence over members in the East. Further, their authority was highly dependent on the maintenance of economic prosperity and stability.

The introduction of the FRG’s Social Market Economy upset relations between East Germans and society on an even more basic level. By summer 1991 economic shock therapy, carried out through the introduction of the West German DM at a one-to-one exchange rate and the efforts of unions to quickly raise Eastern wages to Western levels, produced unemployment at an official rate of 18 percent and at an unofficial rate in excess of one-third of the Eastern working population. ₃₉ Further, prior to 1989 large enterprises (Kombinate), in addition to their part in industrial production, often played a large role in the local provision of public housing, consumer goods, education, and social and leisure activities for workers and their families. Skyrocketing debts and wage rates accompanying currency union and the breakup and reorganization of Kombinate by the Treuhandanstalt eliminated these auxiliary functions before other organizations could step in to replace them. ₄₀ Finally, claims for restitution of confiscated property by Westerners and elimination of many generous provisions of the Eastern welfare system brought insecurity and disruption right into family life. Many families in the East now faced the disruptions associated with losing a home or the guarantee of free child care.

Together shock transformation of the economy and public administration created a social environment in which both material resources and organized social life were relatively scarce. Even the substantial transfer of resources from West to East has taken place through the central government and has been devoted to maintenance of stability through the subsidization of consumption, profoundly shaping the organization of economic and social life. As a consequence of these developments, the bonds which tie citizens to the normative order of society, as well as the mechanisms which control them should they breach this order, were temporarily disrupted in the East. This fluidity allowed tensions between German and non-German residents to develop along a different path than was possible in the West.

Moving the Problems and Debates Surrounding Immigration East

Accession to the FRG through the provisions of Article 23 transferred more than the institutional rules and organizations of Western parliamentary democracy East. With laws and parties came also the issues and debates of the FRG’s political system, including the unsolved problems of immigration. Regardless of whether Western politicians understood this, immigration and politicians’ comments on it had a different audience in Easterners, who themselves confronted a different set of problems than their new Western compatriots. Consequently, as with the rise of far right parties in the West before 1989, established politicians played an instrumental role in setting the stage for the second outcome in ethnic relations, xenophobic violence.

As a concrete problem, immigration was introduced through the Treaty on Unification. It stipulated that the new Länder—in proportion to their population rather than in consideration of the social conditions prevailing in the East—take 20 percent of new asylum-seekers as well as 20 percent of “ethnic Germans” from Eastern Europe. ₄₁ Although it never approached Western levels in practice, the increasing presence of foreigners in the East provided a focus for many of the dissatisfactions accompanying unity. In the face of massive unemployment, housing shortages, and the myriad unsolved problems of reorganizing Eastern society, it proved difficult for officials to address or diffuse popular resentments over public expenditures and accommodations for foreign residents. Indeed local authorities in the East often proved unable or unwilling to manage rising tensions between German and non-German residents before they escalated into incidents such as those at Hoyerswerda and Rostock. ₄₂

Far more important than the physical transportation of immigrants eastward, however, was the projection of the politically polarized debate about these issues into Eastern society. Within months of unification public attention refocused on these issues in both parts of Germany. In the course of summer and fall 1991, under General Secretary Volker Rühe, the Union’s “misuse” campaign against asylum-seekers took a subtle but important turn. Rather than the state having reached its capacity to accommodate new immigrants, Union politicians suggested that the massive misuse of the right to asylum had overwhelmed the population’s capacity for tolerance. ₄₃ Quickly the existence of a mythical threshold for society’s capacity to accommodate foreign residents became common wisdom, and even commentators who should have known better began to speak of the “threshold of Überfremdung” (overalienation) as fact. ₄₄ In the more volatile East such statements made the situation more hospitable to racism and xenophobia in two ways. First, they provided existing and nascent skinhead cliques a target group, an “other” against which to define themselves. For these groups Union statements provided outside confirmation by authoritative observers that the presence of this “other” was dangerous and undesirable. Second, the ambiguity toward violence contained in such statements supported the rationalizations of many perpetrators that they were carrying out the will of the silent majority which politicians themselves were too hypocritical to enact. At the very least, they excused perpetrators of violence by placing responsibility for it on the victims. Thus in the turbulence of Eastern society, imported rhetoric of immigration and asylum created the perception that violence was tolerated. The costs of engaging in acts of violence against foreigners were thus lowered.

Entrepreneurs in a Permissive Environment: Autonomous Skinhead Cliques

While polarized debate on immigration and deadlock at the political center of the FRG created opportunity for electoral entrepreneurs from the far right at the end of the 1980s, this same situation was not duplicated in the East after unification. To the surprise of most observers, including far right parties themselves, the turbulence of this environment did not translate into a new electoral potential for parties like the REPs. In fact, since 1989 no far right party has approached the 5 percent electoral threshold in local, state, national, or European elections in the five new Länder. Rather, the fluidity of Eastern society in the immediate aftermath of unification created an opportunity for a completely different kind of actor: small, autonomous groups of young men who, at least in external appearance, adopted the symbols and language of racism, xenophobia, and even National Socialism. This section considers the origin of these groups and the opportunity presented to them by the apparent permissiveness of postunification society to antiforeigner violence.

More than 90 percent of xenophobic acts of violence against foreigners in East and West Germany between 1990 and 1993—including those in Hoyerswerda and Rostock—were committed by groups of men under the age of 25. ₄₅ Of these, about half were committed in groups of ten or fewer. While these cliques represent a rudimentary form of organization and while the overwhelming majority of their members claim a skinhead, extreme right, or xenophobic orientation, it might make some sense to describe them as political organizations. ₄₆ However, even if these are political organizations with a specific ideological orientation, this does not immediately betray the goals or reasons for their existence. Most of these cliques, far removed from the ambitions of far right parties or clandestine neo-Nazi movements, do not seek to win state power or to promulgate a political agenda. Rather, they serve the immediate needs of their members for orientation and a sense of political identity in a turbulent environment.

The core of many of these skinhead cliques came into being during the later years of the GDR. From their origins it is clear that the extreme right ideology and symbols of these groups served primarily the needs of their members for an independent political identity vis-à-vis the homogenizing official culture of “real-existing socialism.” ₄₇ By the late 1970s and early 1980s media-transmitted expressions of Anglo-American youth culture, such as heavy metal, punk, and skinheads, had become nearly interchangeable symbols of resistance for young East Germans against the official culture of the GDR. Distinctions between these categories were less important than the fact that they were all proscribed by the authorities. ₄₈ However, because the self-identification of the GDR was inextricably bound up with a rejection of the NS past, the symbols of the Third Reich proved powerfully alluring to those wishing to express their alienation from the official order. Evidence suggests these symbols were already in ascendence by the late 1980s in many parts of the East German youth subculture. ₄₉ With the collapse of the old social order, existing far right groups formed a core around which other disattached youths could coalesce. Further, the rhetorical environment of the postunification asylum debate provided external reinforcement—or at least did nothing to disabuse members—of a xenophobic interpretation of their surroundings.

Considerable heterogeneity and intergroup mobility exists between political, unpolitical, left, and right skins, pointing to the fact that neither ideological goals nor service to organizations is the primary motive for membership. Rather, the purpose of most skinhead groups centers more on their mere existence than the realization of a common external goal. Such groups provide a measure of integration and belonging missing in other aspects of life in a turbulent environment. They offer members the security of numbers. Finally, in dividing the external society into superordinate and subordinate categories, groups furnish members a sense of orientation toward the outside world. ₅₀

Violence has proven an effective means of consolidating and reinforcing group bonds. It forcefully delineates boundaries between the group and the external environment. It creates its own demand for the safety of the group. It is the primary means of testing the group’s schema for classification of the external world into superior and inferior categories. Finally, it even mediates a common set of values concerning masculinity, comradeship, and action.

Because the origin and operation of such cliques focuses on association for its own sake, rather than organization toward a common political purpose, there are considerable barriers to the incorporation of these loose cliques into formal far right organizations. One observer has suggested that members of skinhead cliques approach action, violence, and group membership hedonistically—out of the individual desire for experience, rather than out of commitment to the realization of an idea—in a kind of “post-modern neo-Nazism.” ₅₁ It has also been observed that individuals with such orientations seldom subordinate themselves to the discipline required by the Führer/cadre organizations of old-style clandestine far right groups. ₅₂ Consequently attempts by more organized groups to instrumentalize skinhead violence have been unsuccessful. ₅₃ Planned and organized acts of violence remain unusual, while the majority of attacks on foreigners seem to be more or less spontaneous incidents facilitated by too much alcohol, boredom, and television-mediated examples to imitate. ₅₄

Hoyerswerda and the Process of Escalation

Attacks by German youths on foreign residents in Hoyerswerda, 17–24 September 1991, illustrate both the processes shaping the eruption of ethnic violence in the new FRG and a turning point in that development. In this week of increasing confrontation, one observes the interaction of skinhead cliques, official weakness, public tolerance, and the appearance of success of violent action, which brought ethnic relations in the FRG to a brutal nadir in the months following. Conveyed by electronic media, these events triggered similar incidents which spread not only throughout the East, but to the West as well.

Initially the process of escalation in Hoyerswerda was precipitated by the attack of eight young skinheads on Vietnamese street merchants at the city’s weekly market on Tuesday, 17 September. ₅₅ Having been chased from the market by police, a group of about forty youths then proceeded to a dormitory housing guest workers from Mozambique; there the attack quickly escalated from yelling racial epithets to throwing Molotov cocktails. In the succeeding evenings, the siege of the dormitory became what one observer described as an “after-work ritual.” ₅₆ On Wednesday, the situation devolved into direct physical confrontations between German youths—assisted by neighborhood residents—and occupants of the dormitory. By Thursday evening, 19 September, a crowd of 300–400, including skinheads from Cottbus and Magdeburg, had gathered to chant “Sieg Heil” and “Ausländer Raus!” ₅₇ On Friday, in an effort to head off another incident when a group of fifty or so youths gathered on the central market square, local police met the rioters with several hundred reinforcements. However, rather than controlling the situation, the confrontation degenerated into an inconclusive power struggle between authorities and the mob. ₅₈

The weakness and disarray of police as well as local and state authorities from Saxony became dangerously obvious to an ever-widening audience. Hoping to return calm to the situation, police removed sixty Mozambiquan guest workers from the dormitory. However, official capitulation only brought on a further escalation of the situation. Recognizing the weakness of the police, anarchists from Berlin arrived to challenge the xenophobic attackers. ₅₉ Describing the situation as completely chaotic, police speaker Wolfgang Kiessling remarked bitterly that neither the mayor nor local legislative representatives had been in contact with the police until Saxony’s interior minister arrived on Sunday, 22 September. “They’re letting us die here,” Kiessling complained. ₆₀

By Monday, 23 September, the damage wrought in Hoyerswerda was complete. Along with 4 serious injuries, 28 minor injuries, and 83 people taken into custody, the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force had suffered a serious loss of credibility. ₆₁ Under massive police protection, and to the applause of 1,000 bystanders, another 150 asylum-seekers were removed from the dormitory. Before a television audience, violence had now attained its ostensible goals with the appearance of public support and official tolerance.

With the televised example of Hoyerswerda, weak social controls, existing skinhead cliques, and the appearance of official tolerance combined to generate bandwagoning effects that led to an upward spiral in the number of violent attacks on foreign residents. ₆₂ The spectacle of violence assured media attention. While most in the FRG felt opprobrium for such incidents, television also transmitted these events from one group of disattached youths to others, as well as to neighborhoods where they lived. In these marginal zones, dislocation and disintegration associated with unification, as well as frustrations over local authorities’ inability to manage problems arising out of the need to house foreigners, had already considerably loosened the bonds which tied residents to the norms of the new German society. Subsequently what was seen as barbarism by broader society was greeted as heroism among the already disaffected. ₆₃ Once Hoyerswerda demonstrated the “success” of such action and that neither state authority nor public opinion was prepared to penalize it, potential aggressors elsewhere were confronted with a new, less costly schedule of risk for participation in violence. Within this environment small groups of perpetrators risked little but stood to gain prestige among their peers by engaging in such acts. ₆₄ In the weeks following Hoyerswerda, attacks on foreigners’ dormitories were duplicated not only in the East but in the West as well. Table 2 demonstrates the qualitative jump in the number of acts of violence against foreigners with a xenophobic motivation that took place in 1991.

In the management of ethnic tensions, German unification involved more than a simple eastward extension of the laws and practices of the old FRG. Rather, attempts to extend constitutional regulations and political debates to the East encountered the fluid environment of a society undergoing rapid and dramatic transformation. In this situation, issues and debates surrounding immigration did not serve to shift or consolidate loyalties to particular electoral representatives or even to the institutional framework of democratic representation itself. In many parts of Eastern society an articulated infrastructure for social integration, interest aggregation, and political representation simply did not exist. In this environment, the relocation of immigrants and the asylum debate provided external justification among the most alienated for participation in the few informal but indigenous associations which did exist—skinhead cliques. Further, weak social controls in the East and media coverage drove the interrelated processes of group integration and antiforeigner violence into a spiral of escalation. Finally, although originating in the climate of the East, violence against foreigners did not stop at the old intra-German border. Rather, with the appearance of public tolerance, it moved rapidly to the West, where it had previously been confined to the criminal margins of society.

Conclusion: Consolidating the FRG's Institutional Parameters

The explosion of xenophobic violence was the consequence of a transitory situation associated with the disruption immediately following the collapse of the East German system and rapid unification. The preceding section has demonstrated how tensions in Eastern society, under already turbulent conditions, were exacerbated by the policies and rhetoric of established political actors before and after unification. This section briefly considers the actions of citizens and politicians to sort out and stabilize regulations governing relations among Germans, non-Germans, and state authority in the face of increasingly violent and numerous attacks on foreign residents before it attempts to draw conclusions about the room for radical ethnic politics in the political system of the FRG.

In late fall 1992 the post-Hoyerswerda climate of apparent public and official tolerance turned abruptly against xenophobic violence. Two developments undermined the appearance of tolerance for right extremism in Germany: the changing public perception of violence and the increasingly aggressive posture of state authorities toward far right activities of all types. Metamorphosis of the public climate was brought on first by the death of two young girls and their grandmother in the firebombing of the home of a guest worker family in the Western city of Mölln in November 1992. This event precipitated a spontaneous and highly visible transformation in the public perception of violence against foreigners and xenophobia generally. Prior to this event, mass assaults on dormitories housing foreign residents had at times been publicly excused as understandable eruptions of social frustration at the failures of immigration policy. The attack at Mölln confronted the German public with premeditated murder motivated by racial hatred and committed by two or three individuals acting under the cover of night. Such naked transgression of taboos about violence and racism made the xenophobic nature of the wave of assaults against foreign residents undeniable. That a precipitous change in the public climate accompanied the events in Mölln is confirmed in both measures of public opinion and the participation of hundreds of thousands in candlelight processions protesting xenophobic violence in December and January. ₆₅

Second, and perhaps inspired by the example of their constituents, federal and state interior ministers—under both the CDU/CSU and the SPD—moved aggressively to dispel any appearance of tolerance for violence and right extremism. State authorities recognized the imperative of leaving no doubt as to the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. While the risks of participating in acts of violence were made clearer by the sentences handed down in trials of several participants in such incidents, this message was reinforced by the federal interior minister’s decision to ban a number of violent neo-Nazi splinter groups in both East and West. ₆₆

Ironically the eruption of xenophobic violence and the eventual public and official reaction to it also proved catastrophic for the electoral chances of far right parties for two reasons. First, as the public climate swung rapidly against violence, it was difficult for electoral organizations such as the REPs and DVU to maintain the finer distinctions between their own rhetorical attacks on foreigners and skinhead violence. State authorities, who were usually also representatives of a party losing votes to the far right, did what they could to facilitate the conflation of these categories in public. ₆₇ Consequently far right electoral parties were swept up with more violent groups in the blanket reaction against right extremism.

The second reason xenophobic violence proved catastrophic for the electoral fortunes of far right parties is that it contributed to ending the deadlock between the CDU and SPD on asylum. While both parties were hemorrhaging votes to the right in Western state elections, events outside the FRG seemed likely to make the current situation worse and perhaps even uncontrollable. ₆₈ By early 1992 civil war in Yugoslavia and the collapse of the Soviet Union made a new wave of refugees and an aggravation of already tense social relations seem inevitable. Against this backdrop, the threat to public order represented by escalating violence put enormous pressure on the major parties to end the stalemate on immigration. Changing Article 16 became the path along which movement took place as a result of the Union’s ability to consistently trumpet the themes of “asylum” and “misuse.” Against the focused Union barrage, the internally divided SPD stood no chance in the contest to frame the issue of immigration in public. Recognizing their advantage, Union leaders took the opportunity to blame Social Democrats not only for a rising number of asylum-seekers, but also for violence. Since—according to Union poiticians—violence was the reaction of a society taxed beyond its capacity for tolerance, an end to SPD intransigence on Article 16 would not only limit the number of asylum-seekers, but also remove the cause for violence. In summer 1992 the Social Democratic leadership gave up resistence to constitutional change and agreed to the inclusion of lists of “secure” countries and transit states from which the FRG would no longer accept asylum applicants.

While the “Asylum Compromise” did not solve the FRG’s problems with immigration, it did dispossess far right parties of the populist platform from which they could berate the major parties “to do something about foreigners!” Now they had to suggest a programmatic alternative to the Union’s position. In this situation far right parties in Germany lost all room for maneuver. They are now trapped in a predicament where they must either formulate a position which is only marginally different from their mainstream rivals or advocate an ideologically motivated program which puts them outside the normative boundaries of acceptable politics. They have no profile if they do the former, and they are damned if they do the latter.

Both of these developments demonstrate the continuity of constraints over possible outcomes in ethnic relations in the FRG before and after unification. On the one hand, overt racism and violence continue to be met by public rejection and legal action by state authorities. On the other hand, organizations seeking to follow an electoral course by distancing themselves from these taboos remain highly dependent on openings left for them by other actors in the political system. When no such space exists, the appeals of such parties remain confined to a small core of deeply alienated ideological voters—precisely where far right parties seemed headed in 1993 and 1994. ₆₉

The emergence of far right parties before and xenphobic violence after German unification demonstrates the role of normative institutions in channeling the development of ethnic tensions in the FRG. The normative structures of all functioning parliamentary democracies contain either implicit or explicit proscriptions against social violence and racism. As the experience of the FRG before unity demonstrates, however, these are not sufficient to preclude aggravations of ethnic tensions in society, such as the problems associated with a rapid rise in immigration, from finding expression in the political system as exclusive nationalism and xenophobia. The experience of the FRG immediately after unity provides us with a powerful reminder that these constraints do not operate among those who remain outside the integrative and control structures of democratic society. Here, if allowed, violence and racism may provide substitute mechanisms for integration and social organization.

However, developments in the FRG also make no indication that the emergence of entrepreneurs exploiting ethnic tensions in a democratic society is inevitable. Rather, the German experience points to the intended and unintended consequences of actors’ choices within the constraints of the normative and competitive institutional structures of democracy. Rapid growth in the number of foreign residents during the 1980s combined with the special situation that the FRG makes no legal provision for immigration to confront elected representatives with a choice about how to frame problems associated with immigration within the political arena. However, politicians did not enjoy unlimited freedom in doing this. The path of history, left by preceding generations in the form of laws and social norms, creates opportunities to frame issues in some ways while foreclosing others. For instance, the institutional topography of the FRG made it possible for German politicians to substitute the term “asylum applicant” for “immigrant” and call for change of the constitutional regulation of asylum on the grounds that German society was burdened beyond its limits by the existing liberal regulation. What they could not demand was that borders be closed and all foreigners be forcibly repatriated on the grounds that they threatened the health of the German Volk. Nevertheless, they were confronted with a choice and multiple paths along which to proceed.

The evolution of the competitive electoral system provides the second set of constraints on how German politicians chose to frame issues. As the ideological lines that divide both parties and electorates become less distinct, parties find themselves in increasing competition to attract the same voters. Often they do so by portraying themselves as effective managers and problem-solvers. However, at the same time they must be sure to differentiate themselves from competitors. Therefore, when confronted by a set of issues as complex as immigration, for which long-term solutions are likely to require institutional reform and a broad degree of social and political support, politicians face another choice. On the one hand, they can admit the complexity of the situation and seek the cooperation of other actors, including competitors, in arriving at a solution. This strategy requires a great deal of trust that others will not seek to exploit the issue for their own advantage, and it harbors the risk that if cooperation in fact ensues, voters may cease to distinguish between competitors, thereby leaving space for new entrants. On the other hand, actors can rely on the limited memories of their constituents, foresake programmatic reform, and seek to preempt competitors by drawing lines on the issue so as to maximize both interparty distinctions and electoral advantage. Because immigration was an issue still relatively open to definition, West German politicians faced these competing alternatives at the end of the 1980s.

Finally, information is limited and history happens but once. Actors can never anticipate all the consequences of their actions. The explosive growth in immigration (an aspect of globalization discussed elsewhere in this volume) combined with the creation of a visible yet disenfranchised immigrant minority—the result of Germany’s restrictive regulation of citizenship—presented a considerable opportunity for political entrepreneurialism—or so Union politicians thought. However, it was the efforts of established politicians—and the Union in particular—to exploit this opportunity for short-term electoral gains—rather than their failure to do so—which opened space to far right parties. In 1989 self-serving partisanship and deadlock at the political center handed a populist platform to those far right organizations making at least cosmetic efforts to conform to social norms about the NS past. Furthermore, the commitment of actors to this strategy at the moment of unification contributed to the outbreak of xenophobic violence. Only after paying a horrible price in human lives and suffering have relations among German and foreign residents and public authority begun to move in the direction of preunification stability. Yet almost none of the problems which precipitated these events has been solved. Although violence was highest in the fluent environment of institutional transformation after unification and receded with the restoration of institutional strength, the economic uncertainties that exacerbated conflict in the East still persist.

The future of ethnic relations in the FRG is open. On the one hand, the recognition by politicians within all parties—at least behind closed doors—that reform of Germany’s citizenship law, Article 116, and immigration practice is necessary provide reason for hope. Indeed, as I have argued here, that law was partially responsible for creating the conditions in which these events unfolded. On the other hand, the SPD’s recent attempt to instrumentalize resentments over “ethnic Germans” against the CDU in state elections in Rheinland-Palatinate and Bad-Württemberg leave less room for optimism that politicians will resist temptation to exploit these issues populistically.

Politicians must recognize that norms about racism and violence, and even the laws built on them, are perishable goods. The persistence of a hierarchy of political rights and the efforts of “democratic” politicians to instrumentalize popular sentiments against weak minorities will eventually undermine them. In fact, prominent observers have sounded the alarm that in the wake of the asylum debate there are indications that Germany has become less tolerant of foreigners. ₇₀ Ultimately the greatest potential for alienation and resentment in German society exists among the large and growing population of disenfranchised permanent residents themselves. Until these people are successfully integrated into democratic society, they—like some East German youth before them—may learn to take a different view of racism and violence.

Endnotes

Note 1. The far right political parties with which this contribution is concerned, unless otherwise stated, are the Republikaner (REPs), Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD), and the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU).

Note 2. For an explanation of xenophobic parties and violence as a “natural” reaction to the increased presence of ethnically different populations in West European societies, see Dieter Fuchs, Jürgen Gerhards, and Edeltraud Roller, “WIR UND DIE ANDEREN: Ethnozentrismus in den zwölf Ländern der europäischen Gemeinschaft,” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 45, 2 (1993): 238–53. This analysis clearly rejects the automaticity of the argument presented by Fuchs et al.

Note 3. It is perhaps interesting to note that despite the expenditure of some effort to find figures, it seems the exact number of dependents of guest workers entering and leaving Germany is not known, or at least not published.

Note 4. For an analysis of the contradictory tendencies in official German policy toward guest workers, as well as of the changing composition of the guest worker population and particularly the rising ratio of dependents to employed workers after the recruitment stop, see Ulrich Herbert, A History of Foreign Labor in Germany, 1880–1980, trans. William Templer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990); see esp. ch. 5, “Gastarbeiter in the Growth Economy, 1945–1980,” pp. 235–37.

Note 5. For an analysis of the evolution of legal provisions for the entrance of “ethnic Germans” into the FRG, see Silke Delfs, “Heimatvertriebene, Aussiedler, und Spätaussiedler: Rechtliche und politicsche Aspekte der Aufnahme von Deutschstämmigen aus Osteuropa in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 48 (26 November 1993): 3–11.

Note 6. Article 16, para. 2 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) prior to 1993; Article 16, para. 1, thereafter.

Note 7. For a more complete analysis of such problems in English, see Herbert, pp. 235–43.

Note 8. See Barbara Marshall, “German Migration Policies,” in Developments in German Politics, ed. G. Smith, W. Patterson, P. Merkl, and S. Padgett (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), pp. 247–63. For empirical confirmation of resentments toward “ethnic Germans,” see also Karl-Heinz Klär, Malte Ristau, Bernd Schoppe, and Martin Stadelmaier, eds.: Die Wähler der extremen Rechten, vol. 1, Weder verharmlosen noch dämonisieren, and vol. 3, Sozialstruktur und Einstellungenvon Wählern rechtsextremer Parteien (Bonn: Demokratische Gemeinde-Vorwärts Verlag GmbH, 1989), in which it is stated that fear and opposition to foreigners are directed above all against Aussiedler and then against Asylbewerber and other Ausländer (vol. 1, p. 10). However, Klär et al. give no data confirming this assertion, and it appears that in the study to which the authors refer subjects were asked to respond only to specific questions about Aussiedler and not the other categories. Given that the study was commissioned and carried out by the party executive (Parteivorstand) of the SPD, it must be suggested that this assertion reflects the political interests of those conducting the study. This being said, there is little doubt that Aussiedler were the source of considerable resentment among some Germans.

Note 9. It has also received far and away the most scholarly and critical attention. For the most influential example of such attention, see Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Note 10. Heribert Prantl, “Hysterie und Hilflosigkeit: Chronik der Asyldebatte seit der deutschen Einheit,” in Zuwanderung und Asyl in der Konkurrenzgesellschaft, ed. Bernhard Blanke (Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1993), p. 305.

Note 11. Hans-Georg Golz, “Wir müssen lernen, mit Fremden zu leben: Neue Daten und Fakten zur Migration,” Deutschland Archiv 28, 1 (1995): 5.

Note 12. For a full account of postwar asylum policies, see Ursula Münch, Asylpolitik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Entwicklung und Alternativen, 2d ed. (Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1993), esp. chs. 2 and 3. For a fuller treatment of policies on guest workers, see Herbert, esp. ch. 5.

Note 13. For examples of this simplistic utilitarian logic, see ibid., pp. 209ff.

Note 14. Münch, p. 72.

Note 15. Ibid.

Note 16. For an analysis of two periods of the “flowering” of organized right extremism in the postwar FRG—1949–1952, with the Deutsche Reichspartei (DRP) and the Sozialistische Reichspartei (SRP), as well as the rise and fall of the NPD between 1966 and 1969—see Richard Stöss, Die Extreme Rechte in der Bundesrepublik (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag GmbH, 1989).

Note 17. For a long-term analysis of changing German attitudes toward democracy and the NS past, see David Conradt, “Changing German Political Culture,” in The Civic Culture Revisited, ed. G. Almond and S. Verba (London: Sage, 1989), pp. 212–72.

Note 18. Stöss, Die extreme Rechte, pp. 35–36.

Note 19. This problem was first suggested by Otto Kirchheimer, “The Transformation of Western European Party Systems,” in Political Parties and Political Development, ed. Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 177–200. Ursula Feist elaborates it more clearly for the contemporary German party politics in “Niedrige Wahlbeteiligung: Normalisierung oder Krisensymptom der Demokratie in Deutschland?,” in Protestwähler und Wahlverweigerer: Krise der Demokratie?, ed. Karl Starzacher, Konrad Schacht, Bernd Friedrich, and Thomas Leif (Cologne: Bund-Verlag, 1992), pp. 53–54. Note that this interaction could also be represented as a standard game of the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). This type of formal presentation adds nothing to the analysis, and it seems that while the actors may have thought the payoff structure reflected a PD outcome, they were in fact engaged in a game of chicken. This was something they discovered only once it was too late.

Note 20. See Marshall, pp. 256–57.

Note 21. See Barbara Koller, “Aussiedler in Deutschland: Aspekte ihrer sozialen und beruflichen Eingliederung,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, no. 48 (26 November 1993): 15.

Note 22. The specter of the resources of the FRG being overwhelmed by a flood of foreigners is a prominent theme in the rhetoric of Union politicians. See, for example, former president of the Constitutional Court Wolfgang Zeidler’s suggestion that “a billion Chinese would have entrance” to the FRG; former Bavarian interior minister and present minister president Edmund Stoiber’s speculation about “100 million or more potential asylum applicants”; and former CSU general secretary Erwin Huber’s observation that in Eastern Europe “millions of people” were sitting on packed suitcases “looking toward Germany”(cited in Münch, pp. 106–7).

Note 23. For an analysis of the tensions in the REP position on Aussiedler, see Norbert Lepszy, “Die Republikaner,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte no. 41–42 (1989): 7.

Note 24. Considerable controversy erupted in 1989 as to the origin and meaning of the electoral successes of far right parties. Researchers and politicians split between those who claimed these events were the result of a protest vote and those who viewed voters of the far right as being driven by the convictions of a “comprehensive right extremist outlook on life” (geschlossenes rechtsextremistisches Weltbild). This contribution eschews the universalizing assumptions underlying both perspectives. Several works have demonstrated that a great number of Germans (estimates run from 4 to 17 percent) have a “comprehensive right extremist outlook on life,” yet only on one occasion (the 1989 election to the European Parliament) has a number of voters in this range actually voted for far right parties. “Outlook on life” is insufficient to explain voting behavior; even right extremists are in some way motivated by the external environment. However, it is also not simply coincidence that the opportunity for the far right arose with immigration. Deadlock on almost any other issue would not have produced such an opportunity for far right parties. In essence, the perspective here is that voters were registering their dissatisfaction with the major parties on a set of issues on which they often had preexisting far right proclivities. For some contributions to this debate, see Franz Urban Pappi, “Die Republikaner im Parteisystem der Bundesrepublik: Protesterscheinung oder politische Alternative?,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, no. 21 (1991): 37–44; Klär et al., eds., vols. 1 and 3; Jürgen Falter, Wer wählt rechts? (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1994); Eike Hennig, Die Republikaner im Schatten Deutschlands (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1991).

Note 25. Hans-Gerd Jaschke, Die “Republikaner”: Profile einer Rechtsaussenpartei, 2d ed. (Bonn: Verlag J. H. W. Dietz Nachf. GmbH, 1993), p. 44.

Note 26. Stöss, Die extreme Rechte, pp. 60–61.

Note 27. Klär et al., eds., found that 40 percent of REP voters in the 1989 European election had voted for the Union in 1987 while 20 percent had voted SPD and another 20 percent had not voted. Roth points out that in the 1989 Berlin election 53 percent of REP voters came from the Union camp while 21 percent came from the SPD.

Note 28. See Joachim Hofmann-Göttig, “Die Neue Rechte: Die Männerpartei,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, no. 41–42 (6 October 1989): 21–31; Klär et al., eds.; Hans-Joachim Veen et al., The Republikaner Party in Germany: Right-Wing Menace or Protest Catchall? (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1993); and Richard Stöss, “Rechtsextremismus und Wahlen in der Bundesrepublik,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, no. 11 (12 March 1993): 50–61.

Note 29. Note that in the Berlin and Frankfurt elections, as well as in analyses of support for the REPs focused specifically on some North German cities, observers have noted that far right parties fare disproportionately well among voters between 18 and 24; see Dieter Roth, “Sind Die Republikaner die fünfte Partei?,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, nos. 41–42 (6 October 1989): 10–20; Hofmann-Göttig; and Hennig. For the European elections this overrepresentation of the young is leveled out considerably. The difficulty of distinguishing REP supporters from others has prompted Veen et al. to hang the label “catch-all” on the REPs.

Note 30. Politbarometer survey, August 1989; cited in Roth, p. 16.

Note 31. Adenauer Foundation No.8902XO, November 1989; in Veen et al., eds., p. 47.

Note 32. Infas report on the European elections of 1989; in Klär et al., eds., vol. 1, p. 47.

Note 33. Adenauer Foundation No.8902XO; in Veen et al., p. 47.

Note 34. See, among others, the controversy over Heiner Geissler’s renomination as general secretary and other internal machinations in “Kohl: Dann werde ich bockig,” Spiegel, no. 32 (7 August 1989): 16–18; and “Ob ich die Ende zusammenbringe?,” Spiegel, no. 17 (24 April 1989): 17–18.

Note 35. See, for instance, Konrad Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), and the contributions in Smith et al., eds.

Note 36. Klaus J. Bade, “Einführung,” in Aktuell Kontrovers: Ausländer, Aussiedler, Asyl in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2d ed., ed. K. J. Bade (Hannover: Niedersächsische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1992), p. 37.

Note 37. Roland Sturm, “Government at the Center,” in Smith et al., eds., pp. 112–13.

Note 38. For a description of the “unseemly scramble of the West German parties ‘taking over’ in East Germany,” see William Patterson and Gordon Smith, “German Unity,” in Smith et al., eds., p. 27.

Note 39. Official unemployment rates grossly understated the actual rate. Many Eastern workers and employees were put on the status “part time–zero hours” and were in effect paid unemployment compensation by the government through their often bankrupt enterprises. See George Akerlof et al., “East Germany in from the Cold: The Economic Aftermath of Currency Union” (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1991); Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.

Note 40. On the organization and breakup of the Kombinate, see Ulrich Voskamp and Volker Wittke, “Modernization Blockades Become Downward Spirals—The Reorganization of Enterprises and Combines in the Former GDR” (Göttingen: Soziologische Forschungsinstitut der Georg-August Universität, 1991), and Bernhard Eller and Peter Schulze, “The Economic and Social Reconstruction of Eastern Europe: The Case of the Five New German Länder”; paper presented at conference on the Transformation of Eastern Europe, University of California, Berkeley, April 1991.

Note 41. Bade, p. 35.

Note 42. Willems notes that nearly always a long history of complaints to police and local officials about conditions near accommodations housing guest workers and asylum applicants preceded the eruption of violence (Helmut Willems, Fremdenfeindliche Gewalt: Einstellung, Täter, Konflikteskalation [Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1993], pp. 217–23).

Note 43. Volker Rühe in SZ, 24 September 1991.

Note 44. For a controversial academic contribution to this perspective, see Fuchs et al., pp. 238–53.

Note 45. Ninety-nine percent of violent acts and 100 percent of deaths with a xenophobic motivation were committed by males; 90 percent were committed by males aged 25 or younger, and 72 percent were committed by males under 20 years of age; 93.8 percent of all violent acts were committed by groups of which one-half had fewer than ten members (see Willems, pp. 110–13).

Note 46. Among the cliques, 82.2 percent claim one of these three affiliations (Willems, p. 127).

Note 47. The following analysis of the origin of skinhead cliques and their postunification development draws from Manfred Stock, “Youth Culture in East Germany: From Symbolic Dropout to Politicization,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 27, 2 (1994): 135–43.

Note 48. For an autobiographical account of one young East German’s odyssey through the youth subcultures of the GDR and ultimately to the leadership of one of East Germany’s largest and most active neo-Nazi organizations, see Ingo Hasselbach, Die Abrechnung: Ein Neonazi steigt aus (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1994).

Note 49. Bernd Wagner claims that court records demonstrate that before 1989 right-extremist oriented youths were attempting to build or consolidate a position of dominance among disaffected East German youths. See “Gewaltaktivitäten und ‘autonome’ rechtsextrem-orientierte Strukturen in den neuen Bundesländern,” in Neo-nazismus und rechte Subkultur, ed. W. Bergmann and R. Erb (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 1994), pp. 77–98.

Note 50. Ibid.

Note 51. Uli Jähner in Rainer Erb, “Rechtsextremistische Gruppengewalt in den neuen Bundesländern,” in Rechtsextremismus in Deutschland: Voraussetzungen, Zusammenhänge, Wirkungen, ed. Wolfgang Benz (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994).

Note 52. Rainer Erb and Werner Bergmann, “Einleitung,” in Bergmann and Erb, eds.

Note 53. Willems, p. 137.

Note 54. Ibid., pp. 184ff.

Note 55. Ibid., p. 227.

Note 56. Knut Preis, “Pogrome als Feierabendritual,” SZ, 24 September 1991, p. 3.

Note 57. Willems, p. 227, and SZ, 21 and 22 September 1991, p. 5.

Note 58. Willems, p. 227.

Note 59. SZ, 23 September 1991, p. 2.

Note 60. Ibid.

Note 61. SZ, 25 September 1991, p. 1.

Note 62. For quantitative analysis of the catalyst effect of incidents such as Hoyerswerda and Rostock on the escalation of violence in Germany, see Thomas Ohlemacher: “Bevölkerungsmeinung und Gewalt gegen Ausländer im vereinigten Deutschland” (Berlin: Wissenschaftzentrum Berlin [WZB], November 1993); publication FSIII 93–104, and “Xenophobia in the Reunified Germany,” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 23, 3 (June 1994): 222–36.

Note 63. Eckert in Willems, p. 233, n. 287.

Note 64. In his investigation of legal depositions on acts of antiforeigner violence, Willems (p. 186) finds that perpetrators often discussed attacks they had seen reported on television immediately prior to their own acts.

Note 65. See discussion in Horst Becker, “Einstellungen zu Ausländer in der Bevolkerung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1992,” in Blanke, ed., pp. 141–49, and Ohlemacher, “Bevölkerungsmeinung und Gewalt.”

Note 66. These were the Nationalistische Front (27 November 1992), the Nationale Offensive (22 December 1992), and the Deutsche Alternative (10 December 1992). See Bernd Siegler, “Die Apparat und die Rechten,” in Der Pakt, Die Rechten und der Staat, ed. B. Siegler (Göttingen: Verlag die Werkstatt GmbH, 1993).

Note 67. For examples, see Spiegel, 13 September 1993, p. 51; FAZ, 17 September 1993, p. 5; and FAZ, 1 November 1993, p. 2.

Note 68. For an analysis of the vote in the 1992 state elections in Baden-Württemburg and Schleswig-Holstein, see Ursula Feist, “Rechtsruck in Baden-Würtemburg und Schleswig-Holstein,” in Starzacher et al., eds., pp. 69–77.

Note 69. Falter.

Note 70. For rather disturbing evidence of this, see comments on police violence against foreigners in the FRG in “Amnesty International: Ausländer als Opfer. Polizeiliche Misshandlung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” May 1995; ai-Index EUR, 23 June 1995. See also opinion polls which report xenophobia as the greatest concern among foreigners living in Germany, ahead of financial problems and separation from their land of origin in the “Bericht der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für die Belange der Ausländer über die Lage der Ausländer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Document AS2-73-40, 23 November 1995, p. 19.