CONSTANCE, Germany

The Rhine river has its headwaters near Lake Constance (“Bodensee” in German), the largest lake in the German-speaking world, formed by a huge glacier. Constance (“Konstanz” in German) is the lake’s principal town. It is a regional German city in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, situated on the Swiss border.

The excellent Archeological Museum describes in pictures and relics the region’s and Constance’s prehistoric, Celtic, Germanic, and Roman history. The city was the meeting place of the Council of Constance (1414-1418), called by John XXIII to resolve the Great Schism, the emergence of three rival popes. The Council ran for a total of four years. John himself was deposed.

Constance had the good fortune during the Second World War of escaping aerial bombardment. The reason was that Allied bombing was so inaccurate that they could not destroy the German part of the city while avoiding the Swiss part, and Switzerland was a neutral state. The result is that Constance has one of the few fully preserved old city centres in Germany. Tourists and locals can enjoy the narrow winding streets and market places lined by late-Medieval and early-modern architecture. Cities bombed and rebuilt along original lines, such as Nuremberg, Munich, Frankfurt and Dresden, the Medieval human-scale urban layout is evident, but the buildings themselves lack the authenticity of those found in Constance and a few other cities.

The human scale is also in evidence at Meersburg Castle, a hulking fortification across the lake from Constance. The castle, which dates from the 7^th century, has a commanding view across the western end of the lake. This is no Disney fairy tale affair with airy spires like Neuschwanzstein, but a squat, massively-walled keep that was never captured militarily. Swords, spears, crossbows, helmets and armour are there displayed, as are a moat and drawbridge. The castle and adjoining town are tourist magnets.

Also preserved is the German character of Constance’s population. Non-Europeans and individuals in Islamic dress are evident though in moderate numbers. Germany’s globalist immigration policy has had less impact on that region than in major cities.

Constance reminded me of the Munich I had experienced during the 1990s. That city was my next stop.

MUNICH, Germany

Munich is underrated as a tourist attraction. The city, which dates from the twelfth century, has excellent art galleries, the largest technical museum in Germany (The Deutsches Museum), and an unparalleled range of beer. For the day-walker, it is close to spectacular landscapes of alps, glaciers, lakes and rivers. It is a holiday destination for many northern Germans. The Munich art galleries are world class. I visited the “Neue Pinakothek”, and found rooms full of works by Rubens and Dutch masters.

Despite being flattened during the Second World War, the city centre retains its Medieval street plan and selectively rebuilt buildings, such as the famous town hall in Marienplatz.

During my years living near Munich (1991-2011) the ethnic diversity of that city increased somewhat, though at a slow pace. By 2010 the number of Africans and Middle Easterners had grown perceptibly though still in small numbers. It was Berlin and Frankfurt that had sizeable numbers of Turks, though the numbers were fairly stable. A Berlin teacher I met in the 1990s talked about cultural problems with male Turkish students, namely the overt contempt some had for female teachers like her.

The pace of demographic change accelerated in the years leading up to Frau Merkel’s great betrayal of 2015, when her government opened Germany’s doors to 1.5 million immigrants from Syria, elsewhere in the Middle East, and Africa.[1]

The public culture has become overtly racialized in the last decade. Many businesses place Black Africans in prominent positions, such as waiters, entrance security, and at welcome desks. This can be strange in the case of traditional Bavarian settings, such as beer gardens. An example is the Hofbräuhaus in Munich, historically associated with huge glasses of beer, German waiters, sausage and sauerkraut. Immigrants are also favoured in advertising, in which they occur well above their frequency in the population. An example is shown of a promotional picture shown in a post-office. It is not obvious how race is relevant here.

The overrepresentation of non-Europeans in advertising is so marked that it could be mistaken for anti-German bias. For example, in one Munich shoe shop I counted 16 advertising pictures, 7 (44%) of which were of Africans and other non-Europeans. Yet blacks constitute only about 1% of the German population. One of the shop pictures is shown here.

The racialisation of German commercial culture is widespread. Below is a street poster, which reads “Follow your heart”.

One change since the 1990s is the presence of groups of blacks. However, far more prominent than Africans were people wearing Islamic dress, typically immigrants from Turkey and the Middle East.

On 29 August 2022 I spent several hours in Munich. The number of women wearing full burkas seemed less than during a visit in 2017. However, the number wearing less noticeable Islamic garments was greater. Also, there were more Islamic and non-white children in family groups, often two or three or four children. German mothers-with-children were less frequent and typically had only one child.

Non-Europeans, mostly Muslims, were evident in some regional towns close to Munich. It has been Berlin’s policy to spread immigrants around the country. Again, going by what I saw on public transport, immigrants had more children than Germans, though this is probably due in part to ethnic Germans having greater access to cars.

Relatively homogeneous German gatherings do occur. An example is at cultural sites such as museums and art galleries. On 25 August 2022 I went hiking at Bad Kohlgrub in the Alps south of Munich. It was a steep ascent, the track rising 600 metres in just a few kilometres. The ethnic concentration I found could not have been due to aversion to physical exertion, because the summit can also be reached by a ski lift operating in both directions.

I encountered perhaps 20 other hikers on the way up, and saw maybe 60 others at the summit, where there was a restaurant. All appeared to be European, and there was not a single person in Islamic dress. Judging by language, most of the patrons were Germans. The same homogeneity did not apply at the foot of the mountain, where I saw an African family alighting from a bus.

On 3 September I spoke at length with a Munich resident, a professional in the corporate sector. He reported statistics showing that half of babies born in Germany have immigrant parents. The largest category consists of Eastern Europeans. I described the relatively large numbers of African and Muslim children I saw in Munich and on public transport, as already noted. He blamed Angela Merkel for her irresponsible promise to accept any Syrians who made it to Germany. He also blamed Merkel for the energy crisis, specifically for the failure to diversify supply. He noted that the major decisions to adopt the euro and liberalise immigration were made without a vote. They were treated as administrative matters, not as transformative policies needing popular mandate. I described the same undemocratic process in Australia, notably the major political parties’ bipartisan avoidance of immigration as an election issue. The resident said that his brother was a police officer who reported that the relatively high rates of crime by some immigrant populations were well known.

Waiting for a train, I also struck up a conversation with an immigrant, and asked about his experience of German race relations. He explained that he preferred Berlin to Munich, because there weren’t so many Germans in Berlin. (Not too-few fellow ethnics, but too many Germans.)

Germany is still a robust white society. The negative impact of diversity is still to come in education and employment, though criminal acts and welfare cost are soaring. Identity politics is already picking up steam. The German mainstream media and education systems are in lock-step with pro-diversity policies. The patriotic party, the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), is isolated in politics by other parties, the media and corporations, despite receiving 24% of the vote.

There have been no apologies, e.g. from corporate leaders such as Daimler Benz chief Dieter Zetsche who, in September 2015, supported Merkel’s catastrophic open-door policy. Zetsche and other executives could not have believed what they said, that large numbers of Africans and Arabs were needed by Germany to work in manufacturing and for their expertise in science and engineering.[2] They knew this was a lie, that both these cultural regions have weak industrial and technological traditions. And they now know of the rapes and assaults inflicted by the new immigrants. And still they do not step forward, heads bowed, to apologise to the German people and to use their prestige to undo what amount to crimes against European civilisation.

Conclusion

The observations above began with Rome before moving onto two German cities, Constance and Munich. Overall, my observations conform with the trend discerned by Douglas Murray, that if those countries’ suicidal immigration policies are continued, it is only a matter of time before the societies, economies, and cultures of Italy and Germany become fractured and cease to be distinctively European.

Part 1 of The Strange Death of Europe Up Close.

Endnotes

[1] Salter, F. K. (2016). Germany’s jeopardy: Could the immigrant influx “end European civilization”?, Social Technologies, http://socialtechnologies.com.au/germanys-jeopardy-could-the-immigrant-influx-end-european-civilization/, with spoken version at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8qcK-jx6_8&t=84s

[2] Mile Sinclair (2015). Dr Z puts cars to one side in support of Germany’s decision to take up to 800,000 refugees, 15 September. https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/mercedes-boss-says-refugees-will-power-german-economic-miracle-53860/, accessed 30.12.2022.