German culture does not exist and the nation’s history has been shaped by “immigration and diversity”, according to Federal Integration Commissioner Aydan Özoğuz, who has argued migrants should not be expected to assimilate.
Writing in Tagesspiegel, the Commissioner denounced the debate over Leitkultur (meaning ‘dominant [culture]’ or ‘guiding culture’) — in which conservative politicians have suggested migrants should assimilate to a shared set of cultural values — as “ridiculous and absurd”. “And no wonder, because it’s simply not possible to identify any sort of culture that’s specific to Germany beyond the language.
Really, now? Let's give it a try, starting some time after their conversion to Catholicism, shall we?
Efficiency, keen skills of
analysis, a seemingly innate sense of
order, and respect for law?
Well, except for a centuries-established hostility toward rule from south of the Alps, which was demonstrated in A.D. 9 by the devastating ambush & annihilation of 3 Roman legions led by P. Quinctilius Varus, as organized & led by the native Arminius in Teutoberg Forest (possibly near Paderborn). So it developed that the Rhine came to define the border between Roman-conquered Gaul and unconquered Germany. Hostility demonstrated again, 1½ millennia later, in the Protestant Revolt, also against Rome, albeit a different aspect. And in the Sack of Rome[‡] by mercenary troops for the Holy Roman/German Empire who'd victoriously entered the City. The notorious episode was disavowed by distant Emperor Karl V, but, gosh, the troops hadn't been provisioned or paid in a long time, and a large proportion of them were newfangled Lutherans, and the general who had supreme command responsibility for keeping those troops under control was (ahem) French.
“Even historically, it is regional cultures, immigration and diversity that have had a bigger role in shaping our history.”
Was bedeuten sie "unser", Türkisch Hündin !? (meaning ‘What yo' mean, "
our", Turkish
[expletive deleted]!?’)[☪]
The A.D.-1st-Century Roman author Tacitus seemed to think that
he could identify a distinctive "German
culture". But he was self-aware enough to realize that he was an
outsider. And the Roman soldiers far from wherever was "home" couldn't help but notice the blonde & red-haired women famously abundant among the Germans. Archaeologists have shown that prehistoric cultures in the region already practiced the fermenting of
beer. What could represent "
German" material
culture better than "
das Bier"? ?
I think a strong case could be made that Germany was less impacted by the disruption of "
immigration and diversity" than any other modern country in Europe[‡]. But modern leftists have elevated "
immigration and diversity" into
empty "values" that cannot be questioned--never mind debated--and have been awarded precedence over the traditional values by which successful nations sustained their success. In mediaeval times, Germans pushed the Balts and Slavs eastward along the Baltic coast and beyond the Oder River; Carolingian-dynasty founder
Carolus Tudites (Fr.: "
Martel") stopped the Iberian Muslim army in Gaul in 732, and partially expelled them with 2 more victories by 739;
Carolus Magnus[¢] won a victory over the Magyars that halted them short of Germany. Germany was 1 of the major beneficiaries of the practically miraculous halt in 1242 of the westernmost
Turkomongol horde, which had not suffered defeat under Batu, and most recently defeated combined German-Polish armies at Liegnitz (
Wahlstatt in Silesia, in modern Poland) in 1241, and also separately defeated the Hungarians[×]. The European "diversity" that would have been provided by settling other barbarian
invaders "immigrants", e.g., Huns, Goths, Vandals, either mostly passed thro' Germany, or suffered a decisive defeat in Germany, then settled down in places like the Balkans, Iberia, Italy, or Gaul. Except the Burgundians, who arrived from Oder/Vistula lands, were defeated by the Merovingians, and settled into being a province of the Franks
ca. 613. Whatever outrages were caused by the Northmen feared as
vikings in Frankish Germany after the 3-way break-up of the Frankish Empire by treaty (843 [÷]), mostly in nonGerman Flanders, it can't hold a candle to the accomplishment (911) of forcing the English (i.e., Danelaw) and French (d.b.a. East Francia) into
land-for-peace trades, surrendering the English and French lands of a
de facto foreign colonies to its viking "immigrants", the latter of which we know today as Normandy.
Are we really expected to accept that some monolingual visitor from, e.g., the U.S.A., rudely blindfolded and parachuted into some proper region of Germany, would be unable to distinguish the culture in which he'd landed from that of Italy or even France? Let him order "
ein Maß Bier, bitte" (approx. 1 qt.), while he analyzes his surroundings. Altho' recognizing Flemish areas of the Netherlands as being such requires knowledge that's probably beyond what can be expected from graduates of U.S. public schools nowadays.
Sooo, Germans have sunk so near the level of
Schafe (meaning ‘
sheep’--plural) that they tolerate a dismissive lecture based on deliberate
lies about their
own culture by an
[expletives deleted] Turk !Perhaps we should recall Germany's loss of huge numbers of its men over the course of the 2 World Wars of the 20th Century. In each war, German strategic war plans
failed, and its men ended up fighting for years on both a Western and an Eastern Front. Surrenders left Germany with disproportionately high numbers of
women with no husbands, plus boys with no
father-figures. What kind of society should that be expected to produce? Might the social balance be decisively tipped in favor of
feminine attributes? So for their prime minister, Germans continue to reëlect a woman who's a native of Communist East Germany, and who acts as if she has no clue whatsoever that as prime minister of the reünited Germany, her primary duty is to protect & defend it, even though the enemy is inside Germany's own borders.
Cui bono? Who might benefit from arranging for Germany to be destroyed from the inside out? Maybe the vast majority of
Frau Merkel's personal income isn't paid by the government of
Germany,
ja?
-------
Note ☪: The ‘
g-with-breve’ in the name "Özoğuz" is a dead give-away to her Turkish origin, but don't get needlessly uptight over the ‘
O-with-umlaut’[†]
Note ‡: Maybe excepting Scandinavia. But Germany was permanently impacted less recently--if not just plain less--than Poland, Spain, Italy, France, European Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and certainly Poland. Does my list seem too long to believe? Then ponder when the various countries finally ejected Saracens, Mongols, Ottomans, and programs of Russian colonization by "Former Soviet Union" (can you say "Plan-ta-tion", hmmm?).
Note ¢: The mother tongue of the Carolingian Franks, including the remarkably successful warrior-king whom the French call
Charlemagne, was
Frankish (a.k.a. Old Franc
onian), which no matter how fervently the French wish to believe otherwise, was an early form of
High German,
not any dialect of French.
Note ×: What went wrong for the Mongols? Only the distant death of Great Khan Ogödäi, because returning to the Mongol homeland to elect a successor to the title "great khan" was a higher-priority duty for leaders of the hordes, even though it required return travel by Batu's horde over thousands of miles.
Note ÷: Treaty of Verdun (843), among the 3 surviving sons of Emperor Louis the Pious, thus the only surviving legitimate grandsons of
Carolus Magnus. They had practically exhausted the fighting strength of the Frankish Empire by the heavy casualties in their foolishly selfish Battle of Fontenay (841).
Note †: I'm fairly sure that ‘
g-with-breve’ is unique to Turkic languages that use the modified Latin alphabet adopted by what had become the Republic of Turkey in 1928. To them, it was promoted by Turkish national hero Attatürk as a "Europeanization" reform. The other dead-give-away letter is the ‘
s-with-cedilla’. The ‘
capital-i-with-dot above’ and ‘
small-i-with-no dot’ are cause for suspicion, but might not be unique to Turkish among modified Latin alphabets. Turkish does share its ‘
c-with-cedilla’, ‘
o-with-umlaut’, and ‘
u-with-umlaut’ with other nonTurkic languages using a modified Latin alphabet, French and German being among them.