Ethnic Minorities FRG

Question 1

State after WW2

Answer 1

Germany became a country with millions of refugees and people on the move ; different allied zones tried to manage this but on 1st April 1947 there were about 10 million refugees and “expellees” ; these people needed housing and feeding and were a problem but then became instrumental to the economy

Question 2

Economic boom of 1950s and 60s

Answer 2

Need for more workers and Government wanted to recruit more workers from abroad but unions thought this would be a bad ideas as they thought they would force down wages even more and create less favourable conditions ; government guaranteed non-German workers the same wages and a preference to German workers
Federal office for labour recruitment was set up in Nuremberg to liase with countries that the FRG had recruitment treaties with ; people had a physical examination here and the employer provided basic accommodation once West Germany lost its East German Labour force in 1961 (Berlin Wall)

Question 3

Foreign labour programme

Answer 3

Favoured middle aged men as they were given heavy manual labour
They were taking jobs that Germans were happy to leave
3 million Germans switched from industrial/agricultural to white collar jobs
Number of foreign workers kept rising too and an increasing number of illegal foreign workers arrived without a work permit ; these people took the worst jobs for low wages and no accommodation

Question 4

Guest workers?

Answer 4

These were the foreign workers - they were guests, so they would be temporary
They were thought of as somewhat inferior - not the same right as a German citizen ; their contracts were only renewed on a yearly basis
BUT many came and stayed bringing families etc and the unions helped them to adjust to work but they had no desire to turn these workers into Germans (long term assimilation)

Question 5

Did guest workers have support?

Answer 5

From church’s such as Caritas (Catholic) and Protestant (diakonisches Werk) but tensions grew due to the hopes of the guest workers and the expectations of most Germans and this came to a head during the recession of 196

Question 6

What did recession do?

Answer 6

Less to hostility towards foreign guest workers who didn’t try to integrate and many landlords refused to take them SS tenants
This was made worse by far right groups when guest workers began to organise and demonstrate for better working conditions

Question 7

What happened in the 1970s regarding the sudden rise in unemployment?

Answer 7

• guest workers were under pressure to leave job and Germany.
• During November 1973, the government stopped hiring and banned permits for families of workers already situated in the country.
• The number of guest workers fell to just under 2 million.
• In 1974, Ford car works in Cologne offered guest workers ‘voluntary severance packages’ based on their time present working at the factory. They said that mass layoffs were likely otherwise and also that many wouldn’t get their contacts renewed at the end of the year.
• Many workers accepted, unaware to the fact that workers had to be laid off based on a point system. So a German with 2 children would get laid off before a Turkish one with 4 children.
• Many guest workers didn’t leave.

Question 8

What happened in the 1970s regarding the sudden rise in unemployment? CONTINUATION

Answer 8

• In 1975, the government gave the guest workers’ children the same benefits as other children, as there were now unemployed guest workers.
• In 1977, the ban was removed and workers started coming in again.

Question 9

Who was appointed as the first federal Commissioner for Foreigner’s affairs, when and by who?

Answer 9

• In 1978, the first federal Commissioner for foreigner’s Affairs was appointed by Helmut Schmidt to work for the rights of foreign workers and to promote their integration.
• At the same time, a clear set of rules for applying for unrestricted residence, but not citizenship, was laid down.

Question 10

How was the education of the guest workers’ children managed?

Answer 10

• The government policy, as laid down in the Basic Law, was to provide ‘democratic education’, meaning equal opportunity for all.
• They tried to persuade the Länder to provide mixed-culture learning groups with classes of Germans and of the children of guest workers, giving these children books in their mother tongue and in German.
• The number of foreign children in schools rose from 165,000 in 1976 to 200,000 in 1983 and 60% of these were MUsLim, so there were significant cultural problems with the provision of education.

Question 11

How was the education of the guest workers’ children managed? CONTINUATION

Answer 11

• Most Muslim guest workers’ children started going to school at the age of 6, with no pre-school education and language help because much pre-school education was run by the Christian, mainly Catholic schools.
• Many groups made their own national schools, as children weren’t learning in state schools. - This however didn’t help the integration: Korean schools attracted a lot of hostility. In the 1980s, there was a sharp rise in the number of refugees and asylum seekers applying to enter, and somehow entering the country. The basic law encouraged this.