The Return of the Ugly German?

Is the ugly German making a comeback only two years after unification? So it seems, at least from the almost daily reports of brutal mob attacks, arson, and beatings of foreigners in both parts of recently unified Germany. These assaults are committed largely by neo-Nazi youths, mostly skinheads, who are at the margins of society and not much beloved by the wider population. But there are indications that the number of those sympathizing with their “motives” is rising, and, more important, that xenophobia, racism, and even good old anti-Semitism are more prevalent than at any previous time in postwar German history. Police reaction has been uncharacteristically reserved, and shortly after the worst incident last September—a vicious mob attack (lasting several nights) on a shelter for 150 Romanians and Vietnamese refugees at Hoyerswerda in Saxony—the neo-Nazi German People’s Union (DVU) won 6.2 percent of the vote in the Hanseatic city of Bremen (the right got 8 percent if the Republicans are included). Still, in comparison with France, England, and certainly Eastern Europe, the level of xenophobia and ethnic hostility is considerably less than elsewhere in Europe (not tomention the United States).

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