Media and Minorities

160
Peter Widmann
The spotlight was thus focused on an ethnic group that since the fall of
the Iron Curtain had repeatedly been seen as embodying the dangers of immigration
from Eastern Europe. In early September 1990, four weeks before
German reunification, the weekly Der Spiegel pictured on its cover a
throng of dark-skinned people, some holding children, looking expectantly
into the camera.2 The headline above them read “Asylum in Germany? The
Gypsies.” In the following years, when the country’s asylum policy had become
a heatedly debated political topic — primarily as a result of violent rightwing
extremists’ attacks on refugees — press reports often focused on Roma,
and this minority group remained at the center of media attention after Germany
restricted the fundamental right to asylum in 1993. Tabloids presented
readers with stories about gangs from Southeastern Europe who used children
to steal from passers-by in German cities. And, in summer 2002, the Kölner
Express featured a cover in the style of a wanted poster showing more than
50 photographs of children’s faces under the headline “The Child Thieves of
Cologne.”3
When ten Central and Eastern European states joined the EU in 2004,
many observers feared that the Roma people, in particular, would immigrate
in large numbers to Germany. Television footage of Slovakian slums where
Roma lived on the margins of society fueled the anxiety in Germany that
many would soon head westward in the hope of a better life there. Though
mass Roma immigration never materialized after this initial eastern enlargement
of the EU, people had similar fears when Romania and Bulgaria became
EU members in 2007.
In 2013 and 2014, the German public once again saw images of Roma in
squalid living conditions on television and online news sites and in newspapers.
Now, though, the shots were of German cities — of Duisburg, for example,
where a rundown building with 47 apartments made national headlines.
There were also reports, including one from the Neukölln district of
Berlin, that Roma families with large numbers of children were living off the
monthly child benefit they received.4 Although there was no reliable data
on Roma immigration from Romania and Bulgaria and it was impossible
to say how widespread this practice was, the reports created the impression
that Germany was threatened with the general decay of its urban districts and
the abuse of its social-welfare system.
2 Der Spiegel, 3 September 1990.
3 Kölner Express, 22 August 2002.
4 Lisa Caspari, “Verarmte Roma, überforderte Kommunen,” Die Zeit
www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2013–02/roma-grossstaedte-bulgarien-rumaenienstaedtetag-strategie.
© 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
ISBN Print: 9783525300886 — ISBN E-Book: 9783666300882