MIGRATION: What Some People Brought to Germany

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Clive Freeman

BERLIN, Dec 27 2005 (IPS) - Two interlocking exhibitions depicting the rich ebb and flow of migrant workers in Germany over the past 500 years are currently being staged at Berlin’s German Historical Museum. One is called ‘Migration 1500 to 2005’, and the other ‘Immigration Land Germany – The Hugeuenots’.

It has taken this nation quite a while to recognise it is a land of immigration. Not until last year could Germany’s then Interior Minister Otto Schily finally hail a new government immigration law a “historic turning point”, after four years of ideological inter-party bickering.

This recent piece of legislation reflects a long overdue German reality. Nine per cent of the country’s population is today made up of foreigners. Some 3.3 million of them are Muslims.

To anybody who has wandered the streets of Berlin’s Kreuzberg or Neukoelln districts, the fact that Germany is a country of immigrants has been obvious for decades. Foreigners from 130 different countries have long lived and worked in the German capital. Some 130,000 in Berlin are Turks.

During the past 40 years many have settled in the city’s two powerful immigrant neighbourhoods.

Far, far earlier, on becoming a highly industrialised nation during the Wilhelmine Empire (1871-1914) Germany was already de facto an ‘importer’ and ‘exporter’ of labour. In the 1840s and 1860s around 1.3 million Germans left their homeland. Most of them headed to North America.

A further1.8 million followed them between 1880 and 1893. But, as the dual Berlin Historical Museum exhibitions illustrate, it was never simply a “one-way flow of people.”

More than 300 years ago Germany became a sanctuary for tens of thousands of Reform Protestants – later dubbed Huguenots – who fled France following bitter religious strife which peaked in the bloody massacre of St.Bartholomew’s Day in 1572.

Some 200,000 people fled for their lives, finding refuge in England, Holland, Switzerland and Germany. Of the 40,000 who arrived on German soil around 20,000 settled in Brandenburg and Berlin. Others went to Kassel in the Rhine Maine region, to Franconia (Franken) and to the Pfalz.

Many were skilled craftsmen, silversmiths, metal workers, tapestry-makers, businessmen and farmers who were granted special rights in the German territories, including their own judiciary and self-government and the right to found their own churches.

As Sabine Beneke, the curator of the exhibition, points out, the rulers allowing the Huguenots to settle in their countries were almost exclusively Protestant princes. They had acted out of “personal religious convictions and genuine sympathy for the persecuted” French Protestants but economic and political considerations had also played a part in their thinking, she says.

Huguenot refugees in Berlin at one stage represented nearly one-fifth of the total population of Friedrichswerder or the relatively new Dorotheenstadt. In 1701, the work of building new German and French Reformed churches in today’s prestigious Gendarmenmarkt square in Berlin was begun.

Impressive domes were added to the structures in 1780. Today people refer to them more simply as the city’s German and French cathedrals.

In Brandenburg 20 percent of French immigrants were farmers. Besides introducing various types of fruit and vegetables they popularised the cultivation of tobacco, which became a highly desirable product of the 18th century, say the exhibition organisers.

The French influence in Berlin is traceable today all over the city. In family ancestries, in city maps, street names, places of interest and, not to be forgotten, French words – such as bouletten (meat balls), trottoir (pavement), bredouille (mess) – which are now a familiar part of Berlin lingo.

One of the early Huguenots to make a name for himself in Berlin was Pierre Fromery (1659-1738) who, after fleeing to Berlin in 1685, went on to become a royal gunsmith, with a reputation for high quality ironware, weapons, clocks and ornate chests. His products were to prove hugely popular at royal houses across Europe.

Another was poet-writer-journalist Theodor Fontane, who became famous after authoring his four-volume account of his travels through the Mark of Brandenburg. Born in Neu Ruppin in 1819, his forefathers were among early Huguenots who settled in Germany after fleeing religious persecution in France.

At first a chemist like his father, Louis Henri Fontane, he later decided writing was his true calling, and became a correspondent in London. In 1859 he returned to settle in Berlin where he won considerable fame as the author of travel books and novels. He died aged 79 in Berlin in 1889.

Among present-day Berlin personalities of Huguenot descent are lawyer Lothar de Maiziere, East Germany’s final premier who joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) after the communist collapse. Born in 1940 he remembers the importance relatives attached to their French origin, and to being “the best in their professions” when he was a child.

Another member of the family is Thomas de Maiziere, the son of a former German inspector of the Bundeswehr (German army).

Karin Biesel, who has a dental practice near Berlin’s Kurfuerstendamm, is proud of her Huguenot ancestry. She speaks of them having been astute people “whose influence is still strongly felt in Berlin.” Completely assimilated in Berlin and Brandenburg by the 1900s “many of them would doubtless have agreed with Bismarck that they were in fact ‘the best Germans’,” she says.

As the Migration show demonstrates, Berlin has profited from its rich mix of foreign arrivals – especially in the last century, although they were not always made welcome. After the 1914-18 war, two million people fled from revolution and civil war in the former Czarist empire. Most initially came to Germany, including 120,000 ethnic Germans.

When Germany showed little interest in their staying, many migrants moved on to other countries. After the 1939-45 conflict, there were ten to 12 million concentration camp survivors, former forced labourers and prisoners of war in Germany. About 150,000 were still living in West Germany in 1950.

Germany’s new immigration law is based on the demographic projection that, because of declining birth rates and an ageing population, its working population will decline from 41 million people to 26 million by 2050.

Via documents, prints, photos, early weaving machines, silverware and ornate pistols, the Migration and Huguenot displays at the Historical Museum’s recently-built I.M.Pei extension present an intriguing picture of the ebb and flow of workers in Germany in the past half millennium. Both shows run until February 12, 2006. (END/IPS/EU/AE/IP/MI/CF/SS/05)