| CHRONOLOGY | Recommendations or Feedback |
Key dates in pre-20th-century German history
• Late 1st century C.E. – Tacitus writes Germania – “Who would ever think of leaving Asia , Africa , or Italy and migrate to Germany ? It is a wild country under an inclement sky, hard to cultivate, a gloomy sight for anyone who does not call it his home.”
• 378 – the Huns arrive in Europe , posing a major “outsider” threat
• 1095 – Pope Urban II calls for the First Crusade. Beginning in 1096, thousands travel to Palestine in an effort to “free” the Holy Land from Islamic control. On the way, members of the Popular Crusade massacre German Jews in the Rhineland , including over 1,000 in Mainz alone.
• 1453 – the Turks conquer Constantinople
• 1492 – expulsion of the Jews from Spain
• 1683 – the Turks seize Vienna
• 1779 – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan the Wise appears, demonstrating a plea for religious tolerance.
• 1783 – Moses Mendelssohn publishes Jerusalem , or On Religious Power and Judaism, a major work of the Haskalah (the German-Jewish Enlightenment), in which the author discusses the possible assimilation of Jews into Germany society.
• 1819 – Goethe deals with relations between the West and “exotic”East in his Westöstlicher Diwan
• 1850 – Richard Wagner publishes Judaism in Music under a pseudonym. This is Wagner’s first major anti-Semitic work written and published, and from now on his letters regularly contain anti-Semitic remarks. Wagner’s music and views on Jews and Judaism would have a profound effect upon Nazi ideology.
• 1871 – The Second German Empire is founded by Bismarck , resulting in the establishment of a modern German nation for the first time. Germany becomes a nation-state with defined borders that no longer solely rely upon a concept of the German Volk.
• 1884/1885 – The Conference of Berlin (“Congo Conference”) establishes Germany ’s right to the territory in Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia )
Key Dates in 20th-Century German History
• 1913 – German Imperial and State Citizenship Law defines citizenship primarily by descent
• November 9, 1918 – Founding of Weimar Republic
• 1920 – foundation of the Nazi Party (NSDAP)
• January 30, 1933 – Hitler becomes Chancellor
• 1935 – proclamation of the Nazi race laws
• November 9, 1938 – Reichskristallnacht
• January 20, 1942 – at the Wannsee Conference the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” is announced by Heydrich
• 1950 – the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland is founded
• 1955 – Bilateral Recruitment Agreement with Italy
• 1960 – Bilateral Recruitment Agreements with Spain and Greece
• 1960 – the number of foreign workers, mostly from Italy , stands at 686,000 (1.2% of Germany ’s population)
• August 13, 1961 – erection of the Berlin Wall
• 1961 – Bilateral Recruitment Agreement with Turkey . A Central Recruitment Office is established in Istanbul , and by the year’s end, 7,000 Turkish workers are living in Germany
• 1962—founding of the first Turkish social and political organization in Germany , the Union of Turkish Workers in the Cologne Region
• March 1962—Conflicting information about taxation rates of salaries leads Turkish miners in Essen and Hamburg to stage a strike. 26 workers are fired and deported
• 1963 —West Germany (FRG) signs guest worker agreement with Morocco
• June 15, 1963 — the International Committee for Information and Social Action founds monthly newspaper Anadolu—A Newspaper for Turks living in Germany
• 1964 – Bilateral Recruitment Agreement with Portugal
• 1964—West Germany agrees to a bilateral accord with Italy, insuring basic standards for housing and other accommodations for Italian workers in Germany.
• 1964 —West German Radio begins Turkish language broadcasts under the name “Köln Radyosu” throughout the West German territory
• 1964—Armando Rodriguez, a Portuguese man celebrated as the millionth Guest Worker, receives a motorcycle as a present from the West German Government
• September 30, 1964 —renewal of the Guest worker agreement between the West German and Turkish Republics
• 1965 – diplomatic relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and Israel begin
• 1965 - WDR and Second German Television begin to produce television series such as Neighbors, Our Homeland/Your Homeland, and later Babylon , geared towards the Turkish viewership
• 1965—Guest worker agreement signed with Tunisia . 2,700 Turks live in West Berlin . The Foreign Workers Edict of 1933 and the Foreigners’ Police Edict of 1938 are officially discontinued. Guest workers who have been employed in West Germany for five years may now receive an automatic five-year renewal of their work permit, regardless of whether they are citizens of an EC country. This change applies to 400,000 non EC-workers.
• 1966 – East Germany signs “Pendlervereinbarung” (Commuter Accord) with Poland .
• 1967—founding of the Turkish Union (Türk Federasyonu)
• 1968 – Bilateral Recruitment Agreement with Yugoslavia
• 1971—Three daily Turkish newspapers—Aksam (Evening), Tercüman (The Interpreter), and Hürriyet ( Liberty ) print editions for migrant readership in Germany
• July 21, 1972 —Turkish General Consul Metin Kusdaloglu greets Necati Güven, the 500,000th guest worker recruited at the Istanbul Recruitment Office, at the Munich Airport
• 1972—West German Radio holds a contest to come up with alternatives to the label “Guest worker”, which has become recognized as euphemistic. None of the 32,000 entries are accepted. WDR decides that “foreign employee” is the most appropriate.
• 1972-73—Municipally sanctioned Foreigner Caucuses and Foreigner Parliaments are founded in Wiesloch, Wiesbaden , Troisdorf , and Nuremberg
• 1973 – Turks account for 23% of all foreigners living in Germany
• 1973 – Publication of Aras Oren’s Was will Niyazi in der Naunynstraße
• 1973—A strike at the Cologne Ford factory leads to press debates on the “politicization of foreign workers”.
• July 30, 1973 —Spiegel magazine’s cover headline reads “The Turks are coming—Save yourself if you can!”
• November 23, 1973 — West Germany halts recruitment of Guest workers. Many Guest workers, fearing imminent anti-immigration laws, arrange for family members to join them in Germany , thus leading to an increase in immigrant populations, rather than the decrease sought by the West German government.
• 1973—Türk Federasyonu becomes the Islamic Cultural Center, and applies in 1979 for recognition as a “corporation of public entitlement”.
• 1974 – GDR signs accord with Algeria for contract workers.
• 1974 – Rainer Werner Fassbinder releases his film Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul), addressing relations between Germans and “foreigners” living in Germany .
• November 13, 1974 —The West German government decrees that any family member of a Guest worker arriving in Germany after November 30, 1974 may not work.
April 1, 1975 —The West German government decrees that no foreigners may move to a neighborhood or region where the percentage of foreigners exceeds 12% of the entire population. This law is repealed in 1976 on constitutional grounds.
• November 22, 1978 —Position of the Commissioner for Foreigners is established to develop integration strategies. Heinz Kühn, the first Commissioner, writes a memorandum suggesting that the government consider adopting integration policies which do not simultaneously seek integration of foreigners and their voluntary return to the country of origin, but rather focus on cultural and political, as well as economic integration.
• 1979 – The American television series Holocaust is broadcasted in West Germany .
• 1980—Municipalities begin to implement “Measures for Social and Career Integration (EINGLIEDERUNG)” for foreign workers.
• 1980 – GDR signs accord with Vietnam for contract workers.
• September 12, 1980 —Military putsch in Turkey leads to increase in asylum applications among Turkish and Kurdish political opponents of the Turkish Government.
• December 8, 1981 —West German law prohibits children over the age of 16 from joining their parents in Germany . Younger children who have at least one parent in the home country also may not immigrate to Germany .
• May 26, 1982 —Semra Ertan lights herself on fire in the Hamburg Marketplace to protest an increase in xenophobia.
• August 30, 1983 —Asylum seeker Kemal Alt?n commits suicide, jumping out of a Berlin third story window, to avoid being deported to Turkey .
• November 28, 1983 —A new law for the Promotion of Readiness to Return (Das Gesetz zur Förderung der Rückkehrbereitschaft) offers jobless Guest workers 10,500 DM to return to their country of origin. Only 13,000 individuals make use of this option.
• 1985 – Historikerstreit breaks out in the West German press and continues until 1988. A number of conservative historians, including Andreas Hillgruber and Klaus Hildebrand begin to question whether all Germans could be responsible for Nazi war crimes, whether these atrocities were unique, and whether they were part of a greater "banality of evil." Jurgen Habermas, along with Hans and Wolfgang Mommsen and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, argue that these conservative scholars were trivializing the "Final Solution" and conducting a "strategy of moral relativization" that denied guilt for the Holocaust and would eventually deny the Holocaust itself.
• 1986 – GDR signs accord with China for contract workers.
• 1988 – 4.5 million foreigners in Germany , accounting for 7.3% of population
• November 9, 1989 – fall of the Berlin Wall
• October, 3 1990 – German reunification
• 1990—TRT, Turkey ’s state-run television and radio corporation, begins daily broadcasts to Germany .
• April 26, 1990 —The Bundestag passes a new Foreigner Law, reaffirming the principle of ius sanguinis, by which only those of German “blood” heritage receive automatic German citizenship. Naturalization procedures are made easier, yet dual citizenship is rejected.
• 1991 – Emine Sevgi Özdamar, a Turkish writer/actress living in Berlin , wins the Ingeborg Bachmann prize. Great controversy over the state of “German” literature ensues.
• 1992 – 440,000 asylum seekers filed applications
• 1992 – Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s Die grosse Wanderung is published, in which the author addresses the issues of migration.
• 1992 – A reception center for asylum seekers in Rostock , Germany is attacked by hundreds of unemployed German youths angry at the “special privileges” foreigners receive
• November 22, 1992 – An arson attack in Moelln (Schleswig-Holstein) kills three Turkish women.
• May 29, 1993 – An arson attack in the city of Solingen , kills five Turkish residents, all members of a family that had lived in Germany for 23 years. The attack leads to many pro-Turkish/anti-xenophobia demonstrations and to a public discussion about right-wing activities and skinheads in Germany .
• June 30, 1993 – The naturalization of foreigners is governed by the Nationality Act of 1913 and a number of special acts. In order to facilitate the integration of foreigners who were born in Germany, have grown up there or have lived there for at least 15 years, they have a legal entitlement to naturalization under sections 85ff. of the Aliens Act as amended on this day.
• July 1, 1993 - Changes in asylum laws go into effect: Germany will not accept asylum seekers who have entered Germany through neighboring countries that have been declared secure third countries, or whose countries of origin have been declared secure under the German asylum provisions.
• 1993—Teams of the German Soccer League participate in the “Peacefully With One Another” project by wearing a slogan on their uniforms which reads “My friend is a foreigner.”
• 1994—Leyla Onur and Cem Özdemir become the first elected Bundestag representatives of Turkish descent. Onur had served in the European Parliament as a German delegate since 1989.
• March 1995 – Germany joins other countries in urging Turkey to exercise moderation in its operations against the Kurds in Northern Iraq . The PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) continues to attack Turks in Germany .
• January 15, 1997 —Implementation of children’s visas for children from Bosnia , Herzegovina , The Yugoslav Republic, Croatia , Macedonia , Slovenia , Turkey , and Tunisia .
• 1997 – German entertainer Harald Juhnke makes racist remarks to an African-American while in the Los Angeles : "Du dreckiger Nigger, bei Hitler wäre so etwas vergast worden."
• 1998 – release of Hussi Kutlucan’s film Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh (Me Boss, You Sneakers!), an award-winning film about the Guest worker experience
• January 1998—Interior Minister Manfred Kanther declares 1998 the “Year of Security”, in part resulting in higher penalties for illegal immigration. Kanther plans stricter border controls to prohibit Kurdish refugees in other EU-states, such as Italy , from entering Germany . According to the Ministry of the Interior, 9.37 million foreigners live in Germany , 2.11 million are Turks, and one out of four foreigners in Germany is from or descended from an EU-state.
• February 1998—The Conference of German Interior Ministers (IMK) decides not to cease deporting individuals to Algeria , despite widespread violence and persecution there. In 1997, only 2% of Algerian asylum requests were accepted. North Rhine-Westphalia institutes an option for physically or emotionally battered non-citizen women to receive self-standing visas in that province.
• March 1998—The Coalition government coalition rejects a reform of the 1913 citizenship law.
• May 1998—Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel declares that Germany will withdraw aid from those countries that make it difficult for Germany to deport its citizens. This concerns approximately 70,000 individuals from Ghana , Nigeria , Togo , Gambia , Sudan , Vietnam , Bangladesh , Sri Lanka , Pakistan , and India .
• June 1998—A new law allows the Federal Border Control to stop any individual, independent of probable cause, and inspect his/her identification documents. Previously, this procedure was only legal within 30 km of the country’s border.
• July 1998—CDU election platform seeks to reduce immigration by reducing government subsidized housing for foreigners, and rejecting the possibility of dual citizenship. The province of Baden-Wurtenberg prohibits Muslim women educators from teaching while wearing headscarves.
• October 1998—The position paper of the new coalition government aims for major reform in immigration regulations
• November 1998- Newly-appointed Commissioner for Foreigners Marieluise Beck (Greens) plans to develop an image for Germany as a “country of immigration”. Berlin schools may legally provide Islamic education to pupils, after a court battle between the school district and the Islamic Federation in Berlin . Failed appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court to prohibit Bavaria from deporting a 14-year old legal offender born in Germany to Turkey . The Red-Green government decides not to significantly alter the resettler politics of the previous government.
• December 1998—German Catholic Bishops conference declares that it is the responsibility of every Christian to provide “church asylum” to those in need of it. No such category exists either in the Catholic Church or in German law.
• January 1999- Under the leadership of Edmund Stoiber, CDU/CSU begins a petition campaign against dual citizenship, declaring that it would entail a “massive potential for violence.”
• February 1999- Demonstrations in many German cities, outcry against the arrest of the Kurdish PKK party leader Öcalan. France and Germany ’s Interior Ministers declared that the two countries will seek a common deportation practice and common goals for immigration politics
• 2000 – by the end of the year more than 90% of Bosnians who sought refuge in Germany returned home
• 2000 – 7.3 million legally resident foreigners in Germany ; 2 million are Turkish citizens, 750,000 of whom were born in Germany
• 2000 – A new citizenship law takes effect. Children born to foreigners in Germany automatically receive Germany citizenship, as long as one parent has been a legal resident for at least eight years. Children can also hold the nationality of their parents, but must decide to be citizens of one country before the age of 23.
• August 2000 – Germany introduces a “green card” system due to the demand for highly skilled workers – green card residency is limited to a maximum of five years
· March 2001—Chancellor Schröder suggests giving “Green Cards” to approximately 75,000 computer specialists from Eastern Europe and India to fill gaps in domestic expertise. Domestic union representatives question whether the 37,000 unemployed specialists in Germany could be directed towards this lack, and the government responds that they are not “highest quality programmers.” CDU candidate Jürgen Rüttgers campaigns in North Rhine-Westphalia under the slogan “Children, not Indians” (Kinder Statt Inder)
· August 2001 – Interior Minister Otto Schily presents his draft for an immigration law.
· May 2002- Green Cards offered to 10,000 non-EU computer specialists with a higher degree who can demonstrate a yearly gross income of 100,000 DM. 5 year work visa. Germany rejects an EU bill regarding basic rights for refugees in EU-countries without asylum status. The suicide of an Algerian asylum seeker who had spent eight months in the holding section of the Frankfurt Airport leads to heightened critique among churches and refugee organizations against Federal Government procedures. Claiming no fault, the government releases seven detainees on humanitarian grounds. SPD and the Greens plan to lift the general prohibition on work for asylum seekers.
· December 18, 2002 – The Bundesverfassungsgericht ( Germany 's Federal Constitutional Court ) nullifies German's new Immigration Act, which was to come into effect on January 1, 2003 . The new law would have allowed for the entry of thousands of highly skilled foreign workers desperately needed to fill skill shortage areas in the German economy.