The German broadsheet Die Zeit has caused a storm on social media after publishing an article in which it claims Germany will soon be “a country in which migrants will no longer be a minority.”
Die Zeit, the Hamburg-based newspaper widely considered to be a more highbrow read than the tabloids, posted the article highlighting Germany’s irreparable demographic change to its socials on Tuesday with the caption:
Integration was yesterday: Germany is the second-largest immigration country in the world, and the original Germans are likely to become a numerical minority among many in the foreseeable future. And now?
The accompanying photo showed a group of four young immigrants in a top-down flash convertible smiling at the camera with the headline: “They will be the powerful.”
The article recounted a time when there used to be a “familiar homeland” before “the others” came, explaining that Germany used to have just 500,000 foreign nationals residing in the Federal Republic and the country “belonged to the Germans.”
You knew the neighbors. One understood what they said, what they believed, what they served up in the evening. There was peace. The economy grew miraculously.
Despite the article portraying a more peaceful era before mass immigration, the article itself is not anti-immigrant. It later attempts to persuade the reader to consider that Germany has almost always been a country of immigration, citing the Prussians who imported foreign workers — despite nearly all of these workers being European and Christian.
The article also claimed that Germany is “now safer than ever,” despite statistics showing crime falling overall over the last decade, murders and gang rapes are increasing, and a disproportionate share of them are committed by Germans foreign population. In fact, gang rapes reached a record high in 2022, with half of the suspects foreigners.
However, the article’s posting on social media caused a stir across the German political landscape as campaigners on both sides of the immigration debate commented on the story.
“Please what?” Green MEP Erik Marquardt wrote on Twitter in response to the Die Zeit post.
The social media post was later deleted and replaced with a new photo, depicting two white females and the caption, “In recent years, Germany has become the world’s second largest immigration country without really wanting to admit it.”
“This teaser is almost even worse than the old one,” commented Marius Mestermann, a journalist with Der Spiegel, a sentiment shared by a number of other self-proclaimed liberals.
Others, however, praised the publication for drawing attention to the demographic changes in the country, an indisputable fact materialized through record levels of mass immigration under years of liberal governance.
This trend shows no signs of slowing down, with the German government prepared to spend €36 billion on its open borders policies this year, despite growing resentment among the electorate. This public resistance is evidenced by a rise in support for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Germany continues to experience record population growth, with nearly 1.5 million migrants arriving in 2022, and 163,000 new arrivals in the first three months of 2023.