CONSERVATIVE

The End of Germany?
Thomas Spannring
Rarely has a book caused so much controversy
and upset among Germany’s well-to-do and progressive
elites as Thilo Sarrazin’s Deutschland schafft sich ab—a
title that translates into Germany Abolishes Itself. First
published in 2010, the book has sold over 1.5 million
copies, making it one of the most successful books on
contemporary politics in post-war Germany.
The book might well have gone unnoticed had it
not been for the prominence of its author. Sarrazin is
an economist who at one time was a senior manager of
Deutsche Bahn (Germany’s federal railway), as well as
serving as the Finance Senator of Berlin. He was also
an executive board member of Europe’s most powerful
central bank, the German Bundesbank.
A quick glance at the book’s index could lead
the unsuspecting reader into believing that the book
is merely another historical analysis of Germany, the
German people, and Europe in general. To be sure,
Sarrazin spends the first two (of nine) chapters setting
the scene, providing the background for the rest of the
book by giving historical accounts of the development of
German society and the German state, and building the
basis for the arguments that he makes in the following
chapters. Interestingly, his concluding ninth chapter can
almost be read as a work of satire, independent from
the rest of the book, as Sarrazin describes two possible
scenarios—“a dream and a nightmare”—of the future of
Germany a hundred years from now.
Sarrazin makes his key arguments based on the
social and economic problems caused by immigration,
and the decline of the German birth-rate. He focuses
especially on the uncontrolled immigration of largely
uneducated peoples from the Muslim world. He claims
that Muslim workers are disproportionally less integrated
into the job market, hold fewer skills, and have a tendency
of building sub-cultures that not only act independently
but are, in fact, hostile to German culture as a whole.
Many of his arguments and examples are drawn
from his experiences as a professional and politician
living in Berlin, but he supplements these with statistics
and other resources. And throughout the book, Sarrazin
repeats the urgent message of the book’s title, arguing
that unless restrictions to immigration are implemented
immediately—combined with reforms in schooling and
education—Germany will abolish itself.
When it was first published in 2010, the book
was one of the first to openly criticize the country’s
endemic political correctness and the immigration of
unqualified immigrant workers into Germany. (Sarrazin
is a proponent of the immigration of well-qualified
individuals.) The book attacked the systematic denial by
government elites that immigration has placed a burden
on German culture and society.
By talking about culture and ethnicity as driving
forces in society, Sarrazin broke the post-war taboo in
Deutschland schafft sich ab:
Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen
Thilo Sarrazin
Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2010
Germany that forbade anyone from arguing that some
people’s values might be irreconcilable with Western
values. The Left in particular was ready to condemn
Sarrazin as a ‘racist’. Protest rallies were organized
wherever Sarrazin appeared, and anytime he tried to
speak about his book he was received by angry mobs.
Sarrazin’s critics, however, have missed the point
he was trying to make. In fact, he merely dared to put
down on paper what many Germans were already thinking
but did not dare to say: that immigrant communities
have created parallel societies within Germany that in
many ways are hostile to native German and Western
values—and especially to democracy. In addition, these
communities are seen as draining resources away from
the state in the form of social welfare programmes.
For the discerning American reader, this book may
seem like much ado about nothing, as it merely seems to
capture the status quo of a Europe in decline, a common
topic in the American press. But for Europeans—
and Germans in particular—Sarrazin’s book sounds
The European Conservative 31