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The ‘Weltstadt’ (world city) is becoming a ‘Zeltstadt’ (tent city), went
the cry in Munich, governed by the Social Democrats, when asylum
seekers had to camp in the public parks because there was no other
accommodation. Within the SPD, the realists, who were re-elected,
won out over the idealists, who thought in historical terms. �uture
developments vindicated the realists. Changes in the asylum law led
to a reduction in the number of refugees and allowed the German
government to participate fully in the Schengen Agreement and in
European harmonization of refugee policy.
At this point, Marshall underestimates how difficult it had been
for the Conservative union parties to accept the restrictions on the
immigration of ethnic Germans, which had also been agreed in the
Asylum Compromise. The imposition of a quota first of 200,000, and
then of only 100,000 per year put a stop to the ethnic Germans’ unhindered
access to Germany. In the following years, language tests
were introduced, and entitlement to financial benefits was severely
restricted. Thus the Asylum Compromise not only sealed the end of
Germany’s liberal asylum policy, but also signalled the end of a
völkisch immigration policy. Conservatives, who wanted to defend
the idea of an ethnically homogeneous nation against the challenges
of a multicultural society, found this difficult to swallow. To be sure,
the majority of the population no longer considers ethnic Germans
from Kazakhstan and Russia as ‘real’ Germans. They are seen as
immigrants, just like Turks, Iranians, and Pakistanis.
Changes in German citizenship law also demonstrate that the
process of de-ethnicizing German policy is irreversible. Even under
Helmut Kohl, it was made easier for young foreign residents and others
with long periods of residency to obtain a German passport.
Building on the work of Roger Brubaker, Marshall refers to the way
in which the first German citizenship law of 1913, parts of which
remained in force until the end of 1999, had come about. This law
was based on the principle of ius sanguinis (citizenship based on
descent) and prevented children born in Germany to foreign parents
from growing up as German citizens. Thus one of the first reforms for
which the red-green government aimed was the introduction of the
principle of ius soli, which derived citizenship from place of birth.
The Greens, in particular, saw the old law as a ‘legacy of Hitler’s
emphasis on “German blood”, and the requirement to integrate into
German culture constituted in their eyes an attempt to “cleanse” the
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