East Germany: A People Who Tolerate Intolerance : Xenophobia: Fear of immigrants blinds East Germans to the fact they may become foreigners themselves in a united Germany.

EAST BERLIN —  Judging only by the numbers, the problem of foreigners in East Germany is almost negligible: About 180,000 people, barely 1% of the population, without East German citizenship are scattered throughout the country. Over the past 40 years, students, scientists and workers came to this country behind the Iron Curtain. Of this 60,000 Vietnamese, 16,000 from Mozambique, 9,000 Cubans, 7,000 Poles and 1,000 Angolans came on governmental contracts since the 80s to do the work that the local labor force didn’t want to perform.

Now, in the light of German unity, these people are partly superfluous. Factory managers are using brutal measures to get rid of them, interpreting the lack of law and justice in the country to suit their own purposes. The threat of unemployment, closing of factories and other developments are fanning fears of competition among the work force.

But foreigners are not the problem in East Germany; the problem is a xenophobia born out of tradition, naivete, insecurity, stupidity and egocentrism. This xenophobia blinds East Germans to the reality that they may soon become privileged foreigners in their own German homeland.

Sick of dictatorship, the majority of the population has dared to seek a new meaning in life. Extremists on both the left and right enjoy little sympathy, but all signs point to the fact that the majority of the population is ready to tolerate intolerance.

Order and cleanliness, well-being and hard work are considered German virtues. Foreigners, especially those from the Third World, do not fit this picture of a population that lacks the world view of West Germany. The East German narrow-mindedness in foreign matters will be a hindrance when it comes time to compete in the international marketplace. This ability to compete will quickly come under immense pressure, and the first signs of that are already causing uneasiness.

In East Germany, the victims of contempt, attacks and insults are mainly those who look, live and think differently. Gay bars roll down their shutters on days of soccer games. That had not been necessary before. The inability of East Germans to coexist with deviant behavior is the topic of the hour.

Since its founding in 1871, Central European Germany has maintained its contacts with its neighbors mainly through bellicose methods. Twice, Germany attacked the countries outside its borders and decided the life and death of millions. The Germans’ tendency to measure everything according to their own culture is so deep-rooted that it is repeated in the most banal ways in everyday life. And the foreigners--the immigrants from Africa and Asia, from Poland and Romania, Italy and Turkey--are disturbed. East Germany is an heir to a country without colonial history, has had no measurable immigration and, because of Hitler’s racial madness, remains ethnically homogenous. From the beginning, circumstances worked to prevent a normal give and take: the isolation engendered through the erection of the Berlin Wall; political suspicions toward deviant behavior, points of view, thoughts and talk, and the lack of information about the culture of the new foreigners. Curiosity, shyness, fear and aversion came together; prejudices surfaced. But generally, hatred of foreigners was contained except during shortages: In such situations, the foreign workers quickly encountered intolerance and animosity.

There were even physical assaults, for instance when Africans wanted to enter a disco in which others were already dancing. But this was not called racism. Protests against these incidents found no voice. Newspapers remained silent. After all, the official ideology was wedded to the slogan “friendship among peoples,” even though daily life was oriented more toward distancing yourself than communicating.

The collapse of the German Democratic Republic, inescapably hastened by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November, liberated all fantasies. Animosities and hatred toward foreigners were immediately voiced and found an echo not only in the radical right of West Germany but in the ordinary citizens of East Germany, who would love to see German ways cleansed of foreign influences.

“Never in the past 20 years,” said a professor of Arabic literature from Iraq, “have I felt so alienated in Leipzig as since last autumn.” And a well-known opera singer from Bulgaria reported that for the first time since she arrived here in 1970 she has been derisively called a “foreigner.” African students no longer venture outside at night. People who speak Polish on the street are subjected by passersby to disparaging remarks.

Some foreigners experience no such incidents. One British correspondent speaks of the extreme friendliness he encounters in daily life. He is white, Protestant and middle-class. And those who in German eyes appear to be their equals or superiors advance to the status of “foreigners deluxe.”

After a radio broadcast, an angry East Berlin engineer wrote me, giving his complete address, that “the Turks were the first here, with their customs and their violence. The Poles attacked us like grasshoppers. The foreigners should leave us in peace.” The similarity of such language to that of Nazism is obvious; in those days, the Jews were the “vermin” that had to be eradicated. Until fall, 1989, an engineer would have sent such a letter without giving his name and address.

The problems the East Germans will have to live with in the near future are not easy to digest. The German-German culture shock has not yet reached its climax. The cry of the intellectuals early in the fall of 1989, who took to the streets shouting “ W e are the people,” almost overnight changed to the narrow-minded and aggressive “We are one people.” That the Germans, East and West, are only one people next to many other peoples was lost in the delirium of victory.

This attitude is still askew today, and the forced Germanization appears out of tune with relationship to Europe. We are all speaking German but East Germans seem amazed that their West German brothers and sisters have become Americanized. The influence of English on daily conversation has escaped many until now. In other words, even linguistic differences divide the two populations of this one nation, who soon want to call themselves one country in one territory. But the East German side of this national family now feels itself passed by.

To the horror of the West German brothers and sisters, “Out With Foreigners” is regarded by many here as a quick solution to social tensions that have scarcely surfaced until now. More intercultural problems will occur if the East Germans do not orient themselves toward Europe, if they continue to make life difficult for their 180,000 foreigners, and if the laws against racism and discrimination are not enforced with all available forces.

Just two weeks ago the GDR Cabinet decided positively on behalf of the more than 500 Soviet Jews who came to take permanent residence in East Germany; it also announced that 22 persons from different countries had asked for political asylum. But only last Sunday a conservative majority in Parliament voted against the right of foreigners who are permanent residents to take part in elections.

Jews from the Soviet Union, gypsies from Romania, Volga Germans and Germans from Poland are not the only ones who are knocking on our door or who step across the borderless expanse for a visit or to stay. So far, there is no law concerning asylum, no immigration law, no standards, no rules. Those who arrive, day after day, are causing a great scare among the general citizenry. The cry for liberty was indeed raised, but nobody wants to import poverty from abroad.

The new Germany will be measured also by how it gets along with its foreigners, how it accommodates its Jews, how it opens itself up to Europe, Japan, the United States and the rest of the world, all of whom are watching this takeover experiment with great interest.