Not Quite Entirely German

These are questions that came up in my research project about children of so-called “(late) repatriates”. The people I interviewed were all born and raised in Germany, more precisely in Baden-Württemberg. During the twelve interviews, which were conducted between April 2020 and August 2021, the eleven interviewees were between 17 and 31 years old. Their parents and grandparents had The reasons for emigration included the fact that people wanted to escape the political system or preserve their ethnocultural identity, saw better educational and career opportunities for themselves and their children in Germany - or were simply afraid of being the only ones left behind in Romania. After the fall of the Ceaușescu regime in 1989, a particularly large number of German speakers emigrated from Romania.

 from a village in north-western  in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of them came as “Aussiedler:innen” (repatriates) – meaning that they had lived in a country in Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1992, but declared themselves to be “deutsche Volkszugehörige” (German nationals). The federal government assumed that, because of the Second World War, these people had a specific fate and had had to endure certain disadvantages due to their affiliation with Germany. It therefore made it possible for them to naturalize in the Federal Republic of Germany. From January 1, 1993, people who declared themselves to be “German” and wanted to immigrate to Germany on this basis were no longer granted the status of “Aussiedler:innen” (repatriates), but rather that of “Spätaussiedler:innen” (so-called “late” repatriates). The law that regulates the admission of “late repatriates” to the Federal Republic of Germany is called the “Federal Law for Expellees and Refugees” (Bundesvertriebenengesetz or BVFG for short).

German-speaking colonists had already settled in the territory of present-day Romania in the Middle Ages, and more were recruited in the 18th century. This group of people, known as “Romanian Germans”, came to have its own differentiated identity, historically, socially, culturally, politically and economically. Before the Second World War, around 745,000 German speakers lived in this area. The number of German speakers in Romania decreased during the Second World War due to resettlement, flight, civilian and military casualties, and later due to repression. The majority of “Romanian Germans” now live in the Federal Republic of Germany, which took in 430,000 “late repatriates” from Romania between 1950 and 2016.

The people I interviewed for the research project are, according to the law, German. Nevertheless, their feelings on this differ; some of them told me that they are “completely German”, like 30-year-old Sebastian1  , who even described himself as "more German than the Germans":

Sebastian and several others emphasized that they had not inherited a “Romanian heritage” from their parents and grandparents. Others, however, grappled with the idea of being “mixed”. They felt that they not only belonged to German society, but also to Romania. They expressed this in percentages, for example; they literally divided up their affiliation and noted that they were "not one hundred percent 'German'", like 25-year-old student Lisa from Mannheim.

Lisa explains her affiliation based on her past experiences: she was born in Germany, went through the German education system and has German friends. She grew up in Germany and therefore feels “German”. But she also feels connected to Romania because her parents are from there and because she has relatives who live in Romania, and whom Lisa often visits. However, having a Romanian identity takes up less space in her stories than her sense of belonging to a German identity.

Lisa shows here that belonging does not have to be one hundred percent clear. For her, criteria such as ancestry also determine belonging. These criteria have been created by others, and we use them to categorize ourselves. In short: Lisa did not invent this category of belonging, but she refers to it and negotiates what it means for her.

Using categorizations like this to create a sense of belonging also means demarcating our identity, setting ourselves apart from other individuals or groups. This means that people negotiate their affiliation to a certain generation, nation, but also to a gender or the fan base of a soccer team, for example, by differentiating themselves from others. Fluid affiliations such as Lisa's are therefore fraught with tension because there is an ambiguity to them. Furthermore, we can observe how societies create this image of the “other” as separate from the idea of “our own”, and vice versa.4 

Lisa applies her knowledge of what is “German” to herself. She bases her sense of “being German” on where she was born and grew up. She also has friends who she describes as “German”, and so she feels incorporated into that network, so to speak. For her, being “German” has something to do with being connected to a certain place. However, Lisa is not only part of the network within Germany, but also a wider network that crosses national borders – in other words, a transnational network.

Lisa and the other interviewees refer to a concept of belonging in which local ties, but above all ancestry, play a major role. This concept has long been decisive for how German society has negotiated the idea of “belonging” to the nation. It therefore also had an impact on how migration was dealt with. The so-called late repatriates were allowed to immigrate on the basis of their individual commitment to the “German ethnicity”. According to the BVFG, “certain characteristics such as ancestry, language, education, and culture” are considered proof of this. Applicants therefore justified their affiliation not only through their ancestry, but often also through language skills they had acquired from their families. If the application was approved, they were granted German citizenship. The situation was different for “Gastarbeiter:innen” (guest workers), for example, another group of immigrants in the FRG after 1945. The term “guest worker” alone suggests that these people were only supposed to stay in Germany temporarily – not long-term. The counterpart in the GDR were the so-called “Vertragsarbeiter:innen” (contract workers), who came from socialist brother states of the GDR and also only entered the country for the purpose of employment.5  

Since 2000, children of immigrant parents who were born in Germany have been granted German citizenship in addition to that of their parents through the birthright citizenship principle (ius soli). However, there is still a prevailing view in society as a whole that these people are not “real” Germans, even though they were born in Germany, grew up there and have a German passport. Many fellow citizens feel that these people do not belong, and that they can never become “real” Germans according to the concept of citizenship rights through ancestral lineage. Furthermore, as immigrants or descendants of immigrants, they are always under scrutiny: for example, do they behave in accordance with “German” values? Thus, they can never achieve an unquestioned sense of belonging.6  This is also the case for the children of late repatriates from Hamroth: growing up, they are repeatedly given this message that they are “other”, that they do not “belong”.

Many people in Germany are not prepared to accept being deprived of a sense of belonging and are getting involved in the discourse. When we look closely at this issue and engage with people’s real experiences around migration, it becomes clear that our society is diverse and that the concept of the “normal case” is often fictional or over-simplified. Furthermore, society has never remained the same, but has been continually changing and will continue to do so. Similarly, the idea of what constitutes “being German” has never been and will never be constant – it is always being renegotiated, rethought, and transformed in everyday life through discussions, stories, queries and attributions.7  This is reflected in concepts such as the “ post-migrant society

Post-migrant society

Post-migrant (lat. post: 'behind', 'after') refers to a perspective that deals with the social changes and identity issues that arise after migration processes. It is concerned with how migration shapes societies, normalizes diversity and questions concepts of identity beyond traditional immigration discourses. A post-migrant research perspective understands knowledge as processual and produced by people, and explores, for example, the production of knowledge about migrants and society. This also makes it possible to look at global interdependencies and not just think within national containers. ”

Lisa and the other interviewees said that they had gained knowledge about social norms and their deviation from these norms already in childhood. This was in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Laura, a 23-year-old student from Tübingen, compares her experiences back then with the circumstances today:

Laura had the experience of being different and not conforming to a certain norm of “being German”. She feels that today's society is more open to migration and mobility. As a child, she preferred to hide the fact that her parents came from another country. She wanted to belong to mainstream society, which was seen as positive, and was afraid of how people might react if they found out where her parents came from.

The interviewees learned about what it meant to be “German” and the criteria of belonging to that majority through their everyday experiences of being different. Among other things, they identified language as an indicator of differentness. They described speaking grammatically correct and accent-free High German as opposed to speaking the “correct” local dialect, which helped make you “inconspicuous”. They also spoke about having to deal with the differentness of their parents who spoke a “different kind” of Swabian dialect. A similar issue came up when they talked about friends who stood out because of their accents and grammatical errors. In such situations, the interviewees reported that they would often place themselves in a kind of in-between position, realizing that they were actually relatively inconspicuous when compared to these other people who deviated even more from the norm. In this way, they created a “hierarchy of inconspicuousness” that corresponds to ideas of belonging based on ancestral descent.

However, many of the interviewees, including Lisa, who felt that they were “not entirely German” interpreted this in a positive way, with a sense of self-determination. Being “not entirely German” can also mean being special. Over time, the interviewees have reinterpreted their mixed affiliation as a positive characteristic that distinguishes them in today's society. In doing so, they have also come to recognize their family's migration experience, which does not limit their sense of belonging, but enriches it. It gives them a broader scope for thought and action, greater mobility between countries, and more opportunities as a result.

By reflecting on past experiences and telling their stories in this way, the interviewees have made an important contribution – for example, to the ongoing discourses around rejection or refusal on the one hand and acceptance or appropriation on the other in the Romanian-German context. The experience of belonging to multiple identities or groups as a post-migrant global phenomenon thus continues to gain social value and positive reinterpretation.

English translation: William Connor