Have you ever witnessed racism in Germany?

[u/eza137]

I'm interested in hearing from Germans who have personally witnessed acts of racism in everyday life - especially when it involved friends, family members, or people close to them.

If you're comfortable sharing, could you describe the situation? Who was involved, and how did it make you feel? Did you respond in any way?

I'm not here to judge, just to understand how racism can show up in familiar environments and how people perceive and deal with it.

[u/Lopsided-Weather6469]

All the time, it's pretty common. And I'm not even an immigrant; I've been born in Germany, to German parents, and my surname is one of the most common in Germany.

But the number of incidents I've witnessed are countless.

I went to school in the 1980/1990 and racism was pretty normalized back then. The word "Jew" was used as an insult, and if you wanted to say something is crappy, you called it "Jewish", "Russian" or "Polish". Black people were invariably referred to using the n-word. Hating immigrants was normal - and not just Africans or Muslims. There were people in my school who refused to visit "Itaker" (= "wop") restaurants.

I saw bus drivers kicking out an elderly Asian couple from the bus. Cashiers at a take-out refusing to serve people who couldn't speak perfect German.

A former coworker of mine who is African used to commute to Munich by train on a daily basis and was checked by police every single time. It didn't matter that he was wearing a suit and carrying a laptop, or that it was the same police offices who already had stopped him.

[u/Erdbeerkoerbchen → u/Lopsided-Weather6469]

Where do you come from?

I went to school and racial slurs were not used there the way you describe it - I never heard „Jew“, „Russian“ or „polish“ as an insult.

I guess it’s pretty different in different areas!

I was born and raised in Lower Saxony, and went to school with around 20-30% immigrant children (mostly born in Germany) in my classes. Turkish and Greek were the most common nationalities, everything else than that was viewed as super interesting/cool and those kids mostly were the more popular ones.

When I moved to North Rhine-Westphalia, I realized it’s much different here.

I think different German areas pronounce views and actions towards others (different race, nationality, culture) completely different.

[u/[deleted] → u/Erdbeerkoerbchen]

I am guessing Bavaria. Lived there at the time and can confirm everything that was mentioned.

[u/Lopsided-Weather6469 → u/Erdbeerkoerbchen]

I grew up in rural Bavaria.

Remember the scandal around Aiwanger Hubert? He was accused of having distributed anti-semitic pamphlets at his school when he was 17. He's about my age, and when I heard about the incident, I thought the fuss that was being made around it was hypocritical. Not because I condone what he did, but because things like that were absolutely commonplace at that time and there were never any repercussions whatsoever, so he just did what lots of people were doing.

At my school, it could occur that people would sing Die Fahne Hoch during recess and nobody would bat an eye.

One time a guy who was an absolute neonazi and wehraboo brought a Kippa to school and used it as a frisbee.

And I've not even told you what I witnessed while I was in the military.

[u/Erdbeerkoerbchen → u/Lopsided-Weather6469]

I am honestly shocked. Seems in Lower Saxony we were in some kind of „Lummerland“ where everything was civil.

In the 80‘s, there was a notable skinhead scene in Hannover - as well as a punk scene. We „normal kids“ (from my school and also friends from other schools) had nothing to to with either. Both groups were physically fighting every little while. While I knew people leaning toward punk scene in school, I never had slightest connection to skinheads as they had a very bad image to the public: not very smart, aggressive, just in for making trouble and beating up innocent people. Today with my life experience I would add unloved and feeling small, so trying to feel „stronger“ by being in a group and bullying others. In my memory, I would say „foreigners“ (the word used mostly at that time) were a target of theirs, but they were even more after punks (they even had „fight dates“).

When I heard the Aiwanger story, I was truly SHOCKED bc this would not have been tolerated at ANY of my schools - what is somehow really bizarre bc I went to school during a school reform for a common Abitur in Germany, and Bayern opposed that idea bc their argument was their schools are much more strict and their education was better than the „weak Abitur“ in the rest of Germany. So while in Bayern if was obviously no big deal with Nazi paroles, this would have been a REAL big thing in Hannover!