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This article analyses the CDU/CSU's immigration policies and discourses during the Chancellorship of Angela Merkel. In doing so, it makes four observations. First, the article highlights that the CDU/CSU became proactive when it came to passing new and far-reaching immigration and integration legislation. Second, it is argued that these policies have sent conflicting messages, torn between the opening and closing of Germany's borders, and between welcoming diversity and demanding cultural assimilation. Third, this article identifies and explains six ways in which the parties have framed immigration in their common election manifestos from 2005 to 2017: as a cultural, economic, security, humanitarian, European, and gendered issue. Fourth, this study analyses the intra-party divisions that came to a head during the migration crisis: the place of Islam in Germany and the creation of a cap on the number of refugees that Germany would take in. Here, it is highlighted that in contrast to Merkel, the CSU, but also parts of the CDU, have called for more restrictive immigration policies and cultural assimilation. These findings are explained with reference to the political context: the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany and the 2018 Bavarian regional elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Repatriates – so-calledSpätAussiedler– from republics of the former Soviet Union are one of the most important groups of immigrants in the Federal Republic of Germany. Granted German citizenship based on ethnicity, German policy supposed fast and smooth assimilation. Despite the fact thatSpätAussiedlerhad advantages for structural and social integration into German society compared to immigrants of non-German descent and indications of rather smooth integration, the initial hopes for fast assimilation prove to be exaggerated. Instead, as revealed by a survey and interviews on the ethnic self-identification, cultural habits, and linguistic behavior ofSpätAussiedler, a hybrid “Russian–German” identity has emerged amongst many repatriates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present study is concerned with cultural diversity climate at school and how it relates to acculturation orientations and psychological school adjustment of early adolescent immigrants. Specifically, the distinct role of two types of diversity policy is investigated, namely (a) fostering equality and inclusion and (b) acknowledging cultural pluralism. Longitudinal multilevel analyses based on 386 early adolescent immigrant students (Mage  = 10.49 years) in 44 ethnically heterogeneous classrooms in Germany revealed that the manifestations of both types of policies promote psychological school adjustment (i.e., better well-being and fewer psychological and behavioral problems) at the individual level. However, they differ in their effects on acculturation orientations. At the classroom level, equality and inclusion promote assimilation. Implications for research and educational practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have recently stressed two important avenues for the study of cultural diversity and social capital: the role of political integration regimes as well as alternative indicators to generalised trust. This article addresses both. Focusing on Germany, it provides the first study of the relationship between cultural diversity and social capital in a country implementing an 'assimilationist' model of integration. As a further innovation, the article contrasts social trust with an alternative, yet often neglected form of social capital, namely norms of reciprocity. Results based on data from the German Socio- Economic Panel ( GSOEP) and using multi-level analyses of 97 German regions suggest a negative relationship between cultural diversity and social trust in Germany. Assimilationist policies have not (yet) led to efficient integration of minority groups and a value convergence that could bridge cultural divides. Nevertheless, cultural diversity does not erode the commitment to norms of reciprocity, which may therefore be regarded as an alternative foundation of social cohesion in culturally diverse societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses specifically on the incorporation of ethnic minority children within the education systems of England, France and Germany. The trends in policy development after World War II in these countries are examined through the prism of three ideal-typical incorporation strategies – integration, assimilation and separation. This is done to test the theories of universalism, parallel development and particularism, which anticipate different trajectories with regard to these strategies. The paper finds evidence for convergence towards integration with regard to provisions for extra support in the host country’s language. This supports the theory of universalism. However, no evidence of convergence towards integration is found in four other policy areas. For instance, country-specific trends emerge on minority religious education and enrolment into mainstream schools, which is consistent with the particularist perspective. As there is little evidence of the three countries drawing closer in terms of all three adopting a strategy of incorporation promoted by transnational agencies, the expectation that national states can borrow in a straightforward fashion from internationally advocated models of ethnic minority incorporation appears unfounded. The paper further finds that local practices are sometimes significantly at odds with national educational policy, suggesting that future research should be directed more at the local level to determine the policies affecting ethnic minority children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Current discussions on immigration in Germany emphasize the economic benefits of migrant economies and ethnic entrepreneurship, pointing to the positive effects on the ‘integration’ of migrants into the German labour market and into German society. This article focuses on the ethnographic example of Brazilian small-scale businesswomen in Berlin, who run cosmetic salons specialized in body hair removal, and how they embed their businesses in the Berlin landscape of multicultural consumption. On the basis of their migration trajectories I discuss these women's manifold cultural, gendered and class-informed strategies of negotiating integration, encompassing not just their economic activity, the role of independent work and the associated social effects, but also the commodified beauty practice itself. Thereby, the article inquires into conceptions of emancipation connected to migrant women's entrepreneurship in their everyday life that is still highly constrained by migration and gender regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The past 10 years of German history give evidence of a paradigm shift in Germany’s national narrative. The early years of the decade were marked by widespread denial at the elite level that Germany was a country of immigration and adherence to an assimilationist model of integration but progressed to the creation of a National Integration Plan by Christian Union Chancellor Angela Merkel and the liberalization of public opinion. Germany’s recent history shows dramatic discursive and policy changes. This article documents the changes in elite discursive scripts, showing the gradual acceptance and rejection of discourses about integration and their implications for national identity. It concludes that, though the changes are not universally liberal, the decade as a whole constitutes a remarkable liberalization of both elite discourse and public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents an analysis concerning the relationship between nineteenth century letter-writer Rahel Levin Varnhagen von Ense and German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The analysis is part of the book that says, through the example of the life of Varnhagen, the main difficulties of early assimilation in Germany. It notes that the history of Varnhagen's assimilation is indistinguishable from the history of her Goetheanism.

This article examines the development of city policy towards guest workers in the city of Stuttgart between 1955 and 1973. It argues that local-level institutional leaders almost immediately recognized the social impact of labour migration into the city. Initially Stuttgart officials emphasized the construction of guest-worker cultural centres that would take the guest workers out of public spaces and minimize their potential to create social disruption. However, by the mid-1960s, officials from the city administration and relief organizations realized that the foreign workers were not temporary and therefore began to pursue polices to integrate them into West German society—particularly in terms of providing proper family housing and schooling for guest-worker children. By the late 1960s and early 1970s the city administration began instituting various programmes to encourage more active civic engagement by the guest workers, now termed ‘foreign co-citizens’, through the creation of a Foreigner Advisory Committee and a model integration programme in a city quarter with a high density of foreigners. However, their efforts were significantly hampered because of the larger framework of federal and state policies that continued to treat the guest-worker presence as temporary, left guest workers uncertain about the duration of their residency in West Germany, and offered no long-term path to citizenship for guest workers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper discusses the migration of German Jewish psychiatrists from Nazi Germany to Palestine during the 1930s. It focuses on their special assimilation process as immigrants who belonged to a culture different from the dominant Eastern European socialist Zionism and as a professional group which belonged to a marginalized discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a conference on the historiography of Jewish history, held in Hamburg, Germany, from June 22-23, 2012. Discussions revolved around the main theme of the meeting, namely the role the study of the history of Jews and Judaism in Germany has played in the development of historiography on Germany more broadly since the 1960s. Detailed papers touched on such subjects as research on the Holocaust in Germany and Austria, Jewish assimilation, and German scholarship on medieval Jewish history.

This article investigates the relationship between Transylvanian Saxons (Siebenburger Sachsen) and their perceived 'external homeland.' The authors consider the history of German minorities in East-Central Europe and, more specifically, briefly outline the history of Transylvanian Saxons. Against this backdrop, this article examines the changing nature of minority policies promoted by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) until the present day, whilst juxtaposing this with Transylvanian Saxon discourses on identity and nationhood. In so doing, this article argues that the discrepancy between the mutual expectations of the FRG and Transylvanian Saxon emigres became very pronounced after 1989. This then has led to what appears to be the end of the Saxon community, as emigres have found themselves torn between assimilation and a longing for a return to Transylvania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1990 until 2008, about 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union migrated to Germany. At the same time, Germany re-unified and took its place at the centre of the new Europe. In a global world, in which people maintain multiple homes, languages, identities and means of communication across thousands of miles, these migrants challenged German Jewish notions of identity, rootedness and community. Their particular Soviet and post-Soviet approaches to these issues also challenged the liberalising tendencies of an emerging European Jewish identity. This review essay examines how Soviet and post-Soviet Jewish migration to Germany interacted and intersected with new notions of European Jewish identity in Germany, with special focus on Berlin, the largest, most cosmopolitan Jewish community in Germany. Rather than continuing to bemoan the 'failed integration' of post-Soviet Jewry into some notion of fixed German Jewish identity or into liberal European notions of identity, a global approach would allow for the co-existence of many Jewish identities in a diverse German Jewish community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biography of a German-Jewish author and journalist Moritz Goldstein is presented. It presents an overview of his childhood and family situation, discusses his views concerning the permanent homelessness of Jews, and analyzes his essay "Deutsch-jüdischer Parnaß," which questioned the destiny of Jews in Germany and spurred a debate, the Kunstwart-Debatte. Further discussions include Goldstein's double identity as a Jew and a German, antisemitism, nationalism, and cultural assimilation.

The article reports on a May 2010 conference sponsored by the Institute for European History (IEG) of Mainz, Germany, under the title "Battle of the Spoken and Written Word. Russification in Eastern Europe, in the Caucasus, and in Siberia in the 19th to the 21st Century." The meeting discussed Russification in Eastern Europe through language assimilation, through construction of Russian churches, and through changes in borders and geographic place names.

The article discusses composer Felix Mendelssohn's "Reformation Symphony" in which he intended to convince Germans that he, a man from a prominent Jewish family, had assimilated. The symphony seeks to show Mendelssohn's hybrid spiritual identity through a part where the Judaic-sounding Andante moved without a break into the Lutheran Finale. Jewish conversion prompted by non-religious reasons as a way to be accepted by society was suggested to lead to fierce German rejection.

The article focuses on a debate about composer Felix Mendelssohn's German assimilation and examines the relevance of Ferdinand Hiller's oratorio, "Destruction of Jerusalem." Mendelssohn and Hiller were both described to be born into a Jewish family but converted into Protestantism. Hiller's oratorio reportedly conveyed that Mendelssohn employed contemporary attitudes towards Jews in his works to hide his Jewish roots.

Age and school-type differences (primary school and three types of secondary school) in self-related beliefs about ability, effort, and difficulty were investigated in a study of 1723 Berlin youth. Consistent with selective ability-stratified schooling, multi-group structural equation models revealed: (1) mean-level belief differences reflecting assimilation effects among secondary school students, (2) belief variances were mostly narrower among secondary school students reflecting restricted social comparison opportunities, and (3) school type moderated relationships between beliefs. Primary school students thought ability was fixed, that effort paid off, and they used normative task difficulty for gauging how effortful they were. Haupt-/Realschule and Gesamtschule students thought they were less effortful and put in less effort. Haupt-/Realschule student achievement was unrelated to their agency belief in ability and personal difficulty, reflecting a pattern of educational goal disengagement. Gymnasium school students seemed to maximize the use of their ability through effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though information about jobs passed through personal networks has been central to the labor market integration of immigrants in the United States, its role in the economic absorption of immigrants in Germany, where jobs are scarcer and employers more likely to demand formal qualifications, is less clear. Through analysis of German Socio-Economic Panel data, we discovered that nearly half of all immigrant-origin job changers found their positions through networks and that the most vulnerable to unemployment – the young and the less educated – were especially likely to rely on them. Also, jobs found through networks were as likely to lead to improved working conditions as jobs acquired through more formal means. These findings have implications both for debates about assimilation and for social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the economic, political, and military bonds between Spain and Nazi Germany have received much attention, the close cultural exchange between the two fascist states is little known. Thanks to its neutrality in World War I, Spain became a top priority of German cultural foreign policy in the 1930s. The Hitler government not only sought to extend its influence through German culture in Spain, but also encouraged Hispanic culture in Germany through the creation of German-Spanish societies. From 1930 to 1945 the Deutsch-Spanische Gesellschaftin Berlin (DSG) emerged as a main axis of the cultural relations between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The haplotype discrimination capacity of the 9 Y-chromosomal short tandem repeat (Y-STR) loci comprising the so called minimal haplotype together with additional 26 recently described single-copy Y-STRs was evaluated within 391 males from Germany, The Netherlands, and Turkey. The aim of this study was to identify the minimum number of Y-STRs needed in addition to the recommended 9 minimal haplotype loci or the 11 SWGDAM loci for individualizing male lineages. Highest gene diversities were shown for DYS385 loci, DYS449, DYS481, DYS570, DYS447, DYS576, DYS389-II, and DYS390 (D =0.7518–0.8746). The five Y-STRs DYS447, DYS449, DYS481, DYS570, and DYS576 comprised the smallest set of loci in addition to the previously recommended standard Y-STRs leading to the individualization of all males from each single population group. Complete resolution of the pooled population was achieved by the additional genotyping of two further loci, DYS446 or DYS505 and DYF406S1 or DYS522. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article discusses songs which were introduced during wartime periods. It is stated that these songs invoked political criticisms and specified Americanization as a cure for Bolshevism. The propaganda were spread out to people using the music that expressed radicalism, revolution, capitalism, and other cultural sentiments. The article is also supplemented with details about Armistice, music publishers during the period, wartime song publishing, and Germany and Russia being considered as American enemies.

The article offers insights and observations about migration and integration issues in Germany. A comparison between outward migration and internal migration in Germany is presented. Outward migration refers to emigration from around 1620. The two migration processes differ according to how they stand in quantitative terms. In terms of the emigration from Germany and immigration into Germany, it has been explained that while emigration results from economic and occupational expectations, early immigration occurred on religious and cultural grounds.

Otto Hahn, a lawyer and emigration promoter from the German state of Wurttemberg, was an integral part of the German debate about emigration, colonial empire and German identity. This paper suggests that any discussion of nineteenth-century European emigration must consider its location in the context of colonial expansion. Hahn was, in many ways, typical of the emigrationist colonialist. Yet, he had ideas which deviated from what has been recognized as emigrationist colonialism. His growing fascination with Canada sheds light on how this popular ideology could be altered. Any discussion of a transnationally conceived German identity in the late nineteenth century, then, must include intellectual and spiritual communities as sources of such an identity, and must locate them in the general context of the diffusion of modernity. The last part of Otto Hahn's story, finally, allows us to get a rare glimpse of an emigrationist colonialist turned actual emigrant, thereby permitting us to conceive of emigration as a way to contest and negotiate nationalism rather than an exit from the national community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we scrutinize the often stated assumption that labor migrants in Germany turn away from integration and reaffirm their ethnicity by examining their identificational, cognitive, and social assimilation processes. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel, we present trend analyses of different hostland- and homeland-related indicators for the past fifteen years. Results are presented separately for first- and second-generation migrants from Turkey, the EU, and the former Yugoslavia. While not all assimilation-related indicators change a great deal over time, they show at least a substantial difference between the first and the second generation. With regard to the homeland-related indicators, the results by no means suggest that Turkish migrants try to compensate for their comparatively disadvantaged social status by revitalizing ethnic cultural habits or homeland-oriented identifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assigning students to different classes on the basis of their achievement levels (tracking, streaming, or ability grouping) is an extensively used strategy with widely debated consequences. The authors developed a model of the effects of tracking on self-concept and interest that integrates the opposing predictions of ‘assimilation’ and ‘contrast’ effects, which specifies teacher-assigned grades as a major mediating variable, and tested it in 2 settings in which track level is clearly associated with different status-systematic tracking as a function of school type (Study 1, N = 14,341 German 9th-grade students) and separate streams within a comprehensive school system (Study 2, N = 3,243 German 9th-grade students). The results support predictions that students' math self-concept and math interest differ as a function of the achievement of their reference group, their own achievement, and their teacher-assigned grades. No systematic association between track level and math self-concept was found once individual student achievement, school-/stream-average achievement, and teacher-assigned grades were controlled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the ways in which politicians, media, and native residents formulate assimilation discourses—that is, expectations for immigrants to adapt to prevailing norms and cultures—and the effects that such discourses have on social relations in immigrant-receiving societies. Archival and ethnographic research in Germany illustrates that assimilation discourses are central in the dialectical process of identity construction in which native-born Germans and immigrants from Turkey construct their respective 'other', and thereby themselves. I pay particular attention to the effects of assimilation discourses in negotiations over belonging and culture at multiple scales in Germany—from the national to the neighborhood level. Space figures prominently in these negotiations, as the spaces that immigrants occupy and create often become the focus of debates about difference, otherness, and the unassimilability of migrants in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of the cultural ideas about Germany in "Mein deutsches Dschungelbuch," by Wladimir Kaminer. The presence of Germany as a multicultural state is portrayed in the work by focusing on the experiences of immigrants. Wladimir Kaminer travelled throughout Germany and assimilated the experiences of people while composing the present work. He makes humorous reflections in this work which keeps the reader interested and introduces new concepts about Germany.

Focuses on the politics of identity in Germany. Contentions to the notion that Germany is not a country of immigration; Introduction of new laws for immigration, integration and citizenship; Credibility to accusations that the government is jeopardizing the cultural identity of Germans; Emphasis on the country's predominant culture which was characterized by the notion of the clash of civilizations and the incompatibility of different cultures.

Contemporary German anti-Americanism is not a continuation of earlier anticapitalist, antimodern, and often anti-Semitic anti-Americanism. Rather, since the late 1960s a political anti-Americanism, which accepts capitalism and the extensive Americanization of German society, has emerged. It is a response to specific American foreign policies, but its roots lie in the uneven Americanization of twentieth-century Germany. Anti-Americanism has been fostered by Germany's nonliberal variety of capitalism, by its more egalitarian social policies, by its greater secularism, by its more influential environmental movements, and by memories of World War II. Political anti-Americanism is likely to last beyond the current Iraq War crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the political, historical and psychological background of contemporary German immigration. Influence of the Nazi genocide and other crimes on perception of national identity; Debates around the new immigration law; Globalization concerns of the issue.

Focuses on the assimilation of Jews in the German society. Consequences of Nazi anti-Semitism; Origin of modern anti-Semitism; Positions held by Jewish Germans in society; Link between the extraordinary success of German-Jewish assimilation and its catastrophic finale; Rejection of the Jewish identity by Marxists of Jewish descent.

Looks at the impact of the American culture on west Germany. Definition of Americanization; Historical background of the war in Europe in 1945; Effects of the U.S. leadership on Germany's economy after World War II.

This article argues that the massive differentialist turn of the last third of the twentieth century may have reached its peak, and that one can discern signs of a modest "return of assimilation". The article presents evidence of this from the domain of public discourse in France, public policy in Germany, and scholarly research in the US. Yet what has "returned" is not the old, analytically discredited and politically disreputable "assimilationist" understanding of assimilation, but a more analytically complex and normatively defensible understanding. The article concludes by specifying the ways in which the concept of assimilation has been transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights the differences in ethnic disadvantages of foreigners in Germany and immigrants in Canada within labor markets. Structure of educational institutions; Ethnic assimilation in Germany; Differences in national policies of citizenship, equity, and culture.

Examines the assimilation of Jews in modern Germany and the literary works of Peter Gay. Gay's explanation on the ease of Jewish assimilation in anti-Semitic Central Europe; Impact of anti-Semitism on German Jews; Reasons for maintaining the limitations of Jewish assimilation.

The article discusses how the assimilationist elites have responded to the evolution of Jewish anti-Zionism in France, Germany, Great Britain and U.S. The battle between Zionists and assimilationists in Western and Central European Jewry has brought a great impact in the history of Jewish self-definition as a group. The battle has also opened the opportunity for liberty, equality and economics in France. The development of Diaspora Judaism in the U.S., and the reinforcement of Jewish emancipation in Great Britain are also discussed.

The article offers information on the process of assimilation relative to the changes it called forth within the internal structure of the Jewish community in Germany, also in connection to institutions devoted to poor relief. It also examines the network of social institutions established by the Jewish minority in Germany during the Wilheminian period and through the early Weimar Republic. Moreover, it discusses examples of the Jewish system of relief for the poor in Germany and the closed and half-closed welfare institutions. It examines the role of the institutions set up for the poor Jews, and the network of other institutions established within the Jewish community.

The article focuses on Max A. Bodenheimer, an activist and chief advocate of the pro-German policy for the Zionist movement. Bodenheimer was a native German Jew and had worked as the president of the Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland, national organization of German Zionists. Some tensions and conflicts were present in the World Zionist Organization and German Jewry during the starting phase of World War I. Bodenheimer and other Zionists worked to promote cooperation between Zionists and other groups which opposed assimilation and antisemitism in Germany.

The article reports on a conference on the history of Jews in Westphalia, Germany, held in Dorsten, Germany, from March 27-28, 2012. Topics of discussion included the representation of minorities in local history museums, the assimilation of rural Jews in 19th- and 20th-century Germany, and the experience of Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi persecution upon their return to Germany after 1945.

Comments on the use of Jews and Germans formula in Dennis Klein's review of Peter Gay's 'Freud, Jews, and Other Germans.' Information on the assimilation of Jews in Germany; Meaning of integration; Definition of political anti-semitism, racial anti-semitism and social anti-semitism.