Ausländer in the Heimat

ethnocentrism in contemporary Germany

Richard Alba

Peter Schmidt

Martina Wasmer

pp. 1-17

in: Richard Alba, Peter Schmidt, Martina Wasmer (eds), Germans or foreigners?, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003

Abstract

"Ausländer" and "Ausländerin" (fern.), literally "out-lander" but meaning "foreigner," are words suggesting that a social chasm separates immigrants from native Germans, and they appear to sustain the dominant image of Germany in the English-language literature as the "ethnic nation" par excellence (Brubaker, 1992). During the early 1990s, the image was solidified by a rash of attacks on immigrants, many of them occurring in the so-called neue Bundesländer, the states of the east, freshly reunified with those of the west (see Koopmans, 1996; Lüdemann and Ohlemacher, 2002, 67–95). Previously unremarkable places like Hoyerswerda, Rostock, and Solingen attained notoriety far beyond Germany. Pictures of skinhead neo-Nazis parading through the streets evoked chilling memories of the 1930s.