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Thilo Sarrazin

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Thilo Sarrazin
Thilo Sarrazin (2010)
Berlin Senator of Finance
In office
17 January 2002 – 30 April 2009
Preceded byChristiane Krajewski
Succeeded byUlrich Nußbaum
Personal details
Born (1945-02-12) 12 February 1945 (age 79)
Gera, Germany
NationalityGermany
Political partySPD
Alma materUniversity of Bonn
ProfessionEconomist

Thilo Sarrazin (born 12 February 1945) is a former member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank (until 30 September 2010)[1][2] and a German politician (SPD). Sarrazin previously served as senator of finance for the State of Berlin from January 2002 until April 2009, when he was appointed to his current position at Bundesbank. He has been subject to controversy for statements about German immigration policy and for statements about Jewish genetics in relation to the publication of his book Deutschland schafft sich ab ("Germany Does Away With Itself"). It would appear thought that there is nothing racist about his comment on Jewish genetics.

Early life

Sarrazin was born in Gera, Germany to a doctor and the daughter of a West Prussian landowner. His paternal family, a French Huguenot family, originates in Burgundy, while his grandmother was English-Italian.[3] He has explained that his name means saracen (i.e. Muslim) and is common in Southern France: "It is derived from the Arab pirates that were called “Saracens” in the Middle Ages". He has referred to himself as "a European mongrel".[4]

He grew up in Recklinghausen and at age seven he was sent to an orphanage in Bavaria. He graduated from the local gymnasium and then served in the military from 1967 to 1971 after which he studied Economics at the University of Bonn, earning his doctorate. From November 1973 to December 1974 he worked for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and became active in the SPD.

In 1975 Sarrazin began working in the Federal Ministry of Finance. Until 1981 he served as Head of Unit in the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and from 1981 he returned to the Federal Ministry of Finance. From October 1981 he served as bureau chief and was a close collaborator of Federal Finance Minister Hans Matthöfer and his successor Manfred Lahnstein. Even after the end of the socialist-liberal coalition in October 1982, Sarrazin remained in the Finance Ministry, where he was director of several units, including (from 1989 to 1990) the "Innerdeutsche Beziehungen," which the German monetary, economic and social union prepared. During his time as Head of the Federal Ministry of Finance, he was partly responsible for German railways.[5]

From 1990 to 1991 Sarrazin worked for the Treuhand. Then he was up to 1997 State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance in Rhineland-Palatinate. Subsequently, he was chief executive of TLG Immobilien (TLG).

Sarrazin is married to Ursula Sarrazin (née Breit) and has two sons.[6] His apparent characteristic smirk is due to an operation he had in 2004 to remove a tumour on an inner ear nerve, resulting in an impairment of the right side of his face.[7]

Deutsche Bahn

Between spring 2000 and December 2001 he was employed by the Deutsche Bahn, the German national railway. During his first four months he served as head of internal auditing; from 1 September 2000 he was on the board of DB Netz, responsible for planning and investment.

Sarrazin is considered a key developer of the people's share model of the German railway, which provides for the issue of nonvoting preferred stock to limit the influence of private investors. He claims to have made this proposal to thwart the model of capital privatization of Deutsche Bahn. He is regarded as an explicit supporter of orienting the Deutsche Bahn on the principles of efficiency under a cost-effectiveness analysis. His relationship with the former CEO of Deutsche Bahn AG, Hartmut Mehdorn, is characterized as hostile.

Sarrazin's dismissal from the board of DB Netz AG was followed by legal disputes. He drew his salary for a transitional period during which the details of the separation procedures were regulated. According to Hartmut Mehdorn, Sarrazin broke his contract with the company, which stated that secondary activities are not allowed. The employment contract was subsequently terminated without notice by the DB. Sarrazin sued, but the case was dismissed by the Federal Court.

Finance Senator

Sarrazin was appointed Finance Senator to the Senate of Berlin in January 2002. He adhered to financial policy based on strict savings and a single-entry bookkeeping system for the management of local authorities.

As a result of his remarks on Berlin's social and educational reputation some consider Sarrazin being an agitator. His proposals for cutting social benefits were often accompanied by protests. In 2008 he made suggestions, such as that a beneficiary of ALG II could eat for less than € 4 per day. In 2009 he said of unemployed persons' management of energy: "First, Hartz IV receivers are more at home, second, they like it warm, and thirdly, many regulate the temperature with the window," in light of the fact that in Germany, the unemployed do not pay for rent and heating themselves. Sarrazin called pension increases "completely senseless action", but instead recommended that the government prepare older citizens for a "long term decline to the level of subsistence."[8]

As of June 2008 Sarrazin held 46 secondary positions in addition to his Senate post.[citation needed] In the political controversy surrounding the Berlin event center Tempodrom he was accused of having awarded state funds irregularly. The preliminary investigation was also against two other SPD-CDU politicians, three companies and two accountants. The investigating prosecutor filed an informal appeal against Sarrazin, but in December 2004 the Berlin district court rejected a trial because the prosecution was seen as ineffective.[9]

In August 2009, Berlin's public prosecutor conducted an investigation of Sarrazin for embezzlement. According to the office of the prosecutor, he favored the Berlin-Wannsee Golf and Country Club, leasing a golf course to them at a reduced rate.[10] Sarrazin dismissed the accusations on the grounds that he saw no financial loss for the city.[11][dead link‍]

Member of the Deutsche Bundesbank

Sarrazin in June 2009

On 30 April 2009, Sarrazin resigned from his position as senator as he was appointed to join the executive board of the Bundesbank.[12] From May 1, 2010 until September 1, 2010, his responsibilities at Bundesbank included information technology, risk monitoring and review.[13] On 2 September 2010, he was released from specific responsibilities in a move by the remaining board members to have him removed as executive board member following a series of controversial statements made by Sarrazin.[14] Whether Sarrazin will keep his job at Bundesbank or will be dismissed is under review by Federal President Christian Wulff as of September 2010. On 9 September 2010 Dr. Sarrazin has asked the president to relieve him of his duties as board member.[15]

Controversy

Sarrazin advocates a restrictive immigration policy (with the exception of the highly skilled) and the reduction of state welfare benefits. There were severe reactions to his statements on economic and immigration policy in Berlin, which were published in September 2009 in Lettre International, a German cultural quarterly. In it he described many Arab and Turkish immigrants as unwilling to integrate. He said, among other things:

"Integration requires effort from those that are to be integrated. I will not show respect for anyone that is not making that effort. I do not have to acknowledge anyone who lives by welfare, denies the legitimacy of the very state that provides that welfare, refuses to care for the education of his children and constantly produces new little headscarf-girls."[16][17][18]
Sarrazin's controversial book Deutschland schafft sich ab.

He has also said regarding Islam, “No other religion in Europe makes so many demands. No immigrant group other than Muslims is so strongly connected with claims on the welfare state and crime. No group emphasizes their differences so strongly in public, especially through women’s clothing. In no other religion is the transition to violence, dictatorship and terrorism so fluid.”[19]

Sarrazin's statements were criticized by the chairman of the Interior Committee of the German Bundestag, Sebastian Edathy (SPD), the ver.di union and the political scientist Gerd Wiegel. Arno Widmann, culture editor of the Frankfurter Rundschau, wrote: "He reacted hysterically to the change in conditions of West Germany. He's crazy."

Sarrazin's book Deutschland schafft sich ab 'Germany Does Away With Itself', presented at the end of August 2010, came under criticism for claiming that Germany's immigrant Muslim population is reluctant to integrate and tends to rely more on social services than to be productive. Furthermore, he calculates that their population growth may well overwhelm the German population within a couple of generations at the current rate, and that their intelligence is lower as well. He proposes stringent reforms for the welfare system to rectify the problems.[20][21] The first edition of his book sold out within a few days.

An uproar was caused at the same time by an interview with Welt am Sonntag in which he claimed that "all Jews share a certain gene like all Basques share a certain gene that distinguishes these from other people."[22][23][24] He subsequently offered his regrets for the irritation caused[18] and explained his source, for instance, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,[25] referring to international media reports on a recent study by Gil Atzmon et al. that appeared in the American Journal of Human Genetics.[26][27] While implied as an anti-Semitic quote in the press, his record of comments about Jews contradict this.[4] In 2009, he for instance described the Nazi extermination of Jews as "an enormous intellectual bloodletting", a loss which he claimed Germany in general, and Berlin in particular, has never recovered from.[4]

The party leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SPD - Germany's main center-left party) then announced it will investigate whether to terminate Sarrazin's membership, because allegedly his theses are diametrical to basic social-democratic values.[28]

His statements have drawn criticism as well from across the political spectrum in Germany, despite polls suggesting that almost half of the population (including SPD members) agree with his views and even 18 percent would vote for his party if he started one.[29]

Statements of support

Others have however argued that in Germany freedom of speech is being lost, as pressure to conform to certain viewpoints is suppressing and silencing other opinions. Volker Kastrow in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung makes the comparison between the huge pressure and possibly illegal measures to remove Sarrazin from his job and his party - with the furore over the statements made, in private but leaked, by Erika Steinbach, who had referred to what she claims is a fact of history (that the Polish military started mobilising itself against Germany in March 1939), which is apparently not an opinion allowed in Germany, seemingly because it echoes one of the justifications made by the Nazis in 1939 for starting the war, and thus suggests that Germany may be less culpable over World War II. Steinbach has been forced out of her role in the CDU political party, even though she has said that the fact of the date of Polish mobilisation does not take away Germany's war guilt. [30] [31]

While Turkish and Islamic organizations have accused Sarrazin of racism and damaging Germany’s reputation abroad, the prominent German- Turkish sociologist and best-selling author Necla Kelek, who has defended Sarrazin, introduced him at a Berlin press conference in late August 2010 attended by roughly 300 journalists, as big a turn out as for the Chancellor Angela Merkel’s rare press appearances. Kelek said Sarrazin addressed “bitter truths” in his new book and the chattering classes have judged it without reading it.[32]

Henryk Broder, the Spiegel newsweekly commentator, offered an explanation for attacks on Sarrazin’s statements. “And there’s a second trick that’s being used now: he’s being accused of anti-Semitism. If you could accuse him of anything, it’s philo-Semitism, because he wrongly thinks Jews are more intelligent than others,” Broder said. He added, “But of course, with an anti-Semitism accusation you can really go after someone, because anti-Semitism of course is no longer acceptable in Germany, and rightly so. There is no substantive debate here at all – the issue is that a nation gets up, as it were, they all agree and they take it all out on a scapegoat who they’d like to send into the desert. It’s very disturbing.”[33]

"Political Correctness Is Silencing an Important Debate" said Matthias Matussek of Der Spiegel magazine. "Sarrazin's findings on the failed integration of Turkish and Arab immigrants are beyond any doubt. He has been forced out of the Bundesbank. The SPD wants to kick him out of the party, too. Invitations previously extended to Sarrazin are being withdrawn. The culture page editors at the German weekly Die Zeit are crying foul and the editors at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung are damning Sarrazin for passages he didn't even write. But what all these technicians of exclusion fail to see is that you cannot cast away the very thing that Sarrazin embodies: the anger of people who are sick and tired—after putting a long and arduous process of Enlightenment behind them—of being confronted with pre-Enlightenment elements that are returning to the center of our society. They are sick of being cursed or laughed at when they offer assistance with integration. And they are tired about reading about Islamist associations that have one degree of separation from terrorism, of honor killings, of death threats against cartoonists and filmmakers.[34]

Klaus von Dohnanyi, who offered to defend Sarrazin as the SPD seeks to expel him, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper how Germany was overshadowed by its Holocaust history and how a culture had developed whereby anyone saying the words "gene" or "Jew" is automatically considered suspect. He complains that we shy away from debates that "are commonplace in other countries." Among those is the discussion that "specific ethnic groups" share specific characteristics.[35]

References

  1. ^ bundesbank.de: Press release of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank 9 September 2010
  2. ^ bloomberg.com: Bundesbank Says Sarrazin Will Resign on Sept. 30 After Jewish Gene Remark
  3. ^ Koch, Tanit (11 October 2009). "Thilo Sarrazin ist ein großer Integrationserfolg". Die Welt (in German). Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  4. ^ a b c Rosenthal, John (1 September 2010). "The Saracen and the Jews". Weekly Standard. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  5. ^ Alexander Neubacher. Der Spiegel, Der Weichen-Steller. In: Der Spiegel Nr. 39, 2007, S. 74–76.
  6. ^ "Personen A-Z: Dr. Thilo Sarrazin". SPD Berlin (in German). Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  7. ^ "Thilo Sarrazin - der Unerschütterliche". Berliner Morgenpost online (in German). Retrieved 6 September 2010.
  8. ^ Hoffmann, Andreas (13 May 2009). "Kinder kann kriegen, wer damit fertig wird". Stern (in German). Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  9. ^ Gehrke, Kerstin; Oloew, Matthias (8 January 2010). "Letzter Akt in der Tempodrom-Affäre". Der Tagesspiegel (in German). Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  10. ^ Rennefanz, Sabine (29 August 2009). "Ein Geruch von Vetternwirtschaft". Berliner Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  11. ^ Sarrazin wehrt sich gegen Untreue-Vorwürfe. Focus, 29 August 2009.
  12. ^ "Berliner Finanzsenator. Sarrazin wird Bundesbank-Vorstand". Spiegel Online (in German). 17 February 2009. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  13. ^ "Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank: Dr Thilo Sarrazin". Deutsche Bundesbank. Retrieved 5 September 2010. [dead link‍]
  14. ^ "Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank submits application for the dismissal of Dr Thilo Sarrazin". Deutsche Bundesbank. 2 September 2010. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  15. ^ bundesbank.de: Press release of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank. 9 September 2010
  16. ^ "Sarrazin muss sich entschuldigen". Die Zeit (in German). 1 October 2009. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  17. ^ "Bundesbank-Präsident legt Sarrazin Rücktritt nahe". Die Zeit (in German). 3 October 2009. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  18. ^ a b Randow, Jana; Vits, Christian (1 September 2010). "Weber to Debate Next Sarrazin Steps as Merkel Condemns Comments". Bloomberg. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  19. ^ Bild newspaper
  20. ^ "Immigration Provocateur in Germany Crosses the Line". Der Spiegel. 30 August 2010. Retrieved 30 August 2010.
  21. ^ "Was tun?". Der Spiegel (in German). 34 (23 August 2010).
  22. ^ Lowman, Stephen (31 August 2010). "German Politician Stirs Controversy with His Inflammatory Views on Muslims and Jews". The Washington Post. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  23. ^ Fahrun, A.; Schuhmacher, H. (29 September 2010). "Mögen Sie keine Türken, Herr Sarrazin?". Die Welt (in German). Retrieved 5 September 2010. {{cite news}}: |first3= missing |last3= (help); More than one of |last1= and |last= specified (help)
  24. ^ Woodhead, Michael (30 August 2010). "'All Jews share a certain gene': German banker sparks outrage with 'stupid' comments". The Daily Mail. Retrieved 2 September 2010.
  25. ^ Müller-Jung, Joachim (1 September 2010). "Phantasma "Juden-Gen"". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  26. ^ Atzmon, G.; Hao, L.; Pe'er, I.; Velez, C.; Pearlman, A.; Palamara, P. F.; Morrow, B.; Friedman, E.; Oddoux, C.; Burns, E.; Ostrer, H. (2010). "Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry". American Journal of Human Genetics. 86 (6): 850–859. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.04.015. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)
  27. ^ Wade, Nicholas (9 June 2010). "Studies Show Jews' Genetic Similarity". New York Times. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
  28. ^ SPD Website
  29. ^ Berliner Morgenpost
  30. ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
  31. ^ Daily Telegraph
  32. ^ BBC
  33. ^ Spiegel TV
  34. ^ Der Spiegel
  35. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung

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