"Not really true, " explained Engelmann, who survived concentration camps in Germany in the 1940s as Nazi-led Germany fought wars for its popular "Germany for Germans myths. Engelmann wrote, "Many millions of foreigners by today's standards were called national in that census, simply because they had always lived in German borders and for a few years within the Reich's borders.
For example, Englemann noted, "No Polish were counted because they didn't have a country at the time. . . . The Polish Party of Germany was even represented in parliament with 14 representatives as of 1903. " The same could be said of dozens of other peoples and nationalities within both the German and Austrian Reichs. (Many Austrians moved to Germany looking for work as the Industrial Revolution took off in the 19th century, but as they learned to speak some German by 1900 or spoke it already and because Germany had its eye on-and-off Austria as a potential Anschluss-partner, almost none of the German speaking one-time Austrian Empire residents were counted as foreigners either.) In short, Engelmann reports, when one includes all the various language and national groups and cultures busily employed in Germany as of 1900, there were over 3.6 million foreigners, who were often mislabeled "Inlanders by the German Census bureau.
There were among the many "Inlanders Lithuanians, Sorbs, Czeks, Slowaks, Walloons, Russians, Ukranians--and in many cases Russians or Byelorussians "included in that some of 3.6 Million. Now, simply add 3.6 million and 780,000 (Italians, French, Dutch, Danish, Americans, Brits, and others who were in the foreigner statistics) and you have a sum of nearly 4.4 million foreigners in Germany as of 1900. That means at the very least there were 7.8 percent foreigners living and working in Germany officially or full-time as of 1900.
Later, in Engelmann's German history book we discover that there were likely well over one or two million migratory workers and uncounted workers "mostly from Eastern Europe-- in German censuses under the Kaiser. This was because the great farms of the Junkers and other East Prussians were farmed only by laborers from abroad who often officially were not permitted to stay after harvest "inland . However, there was often need even in winter for many of these to stay and be housed on German soil. This pushes the population of foreigners in the German Kaiser Reich to well over 10% of the population.
In short, just like Germany in 1900, Germany in 2000 through 2009 has been a nation of many nationalities and immigrants. The difference is that the census figures are more exact today.
What should be the repercussions in German society if the vast number of government leaders, civil servants and German populations were to come to recognize the facts of history "rather than the myths of earlier Reichs and German Reich-era historians?
Obviously, Germans would have to quickly acknowledge that the land had often been a melting pot of sorts, which already had a vast number of people's already integrated into the system by the 1930s, when German nationalism ran amok and tore down the multicultural (called at that time cosmopolitan) society. It is likely that the myths of German national identity and statecraft (and war craft) covered up a more authentic history and identity of most in Germany for most of the 20th Century.
In the 21st Century, Germans must come clean with their history and work for the first time in a century or more on real integration issues, instead of blaming the foreigners and new-comers for all their ills "as has been occurring under the thumbs of government officials in this decade. These officials see themselves as the last bastion of resistance to promoting German Nationhood in the face of globalizing influences and migration. This attitude and attack on the personhoods and attributes of so-called foreigners must end.
Otherwise, there will be a demographic collapse in Germany in less than a decade or so. Germans need to embrace a more multicultural identity and understand their historic mission to integrate others more efficiently and in a people-friendly manner. The population of Germany has been sinking each year for a generation and the aging German working population depends on migrants to fill the holes in the sinking ship caused by the retirement of the last baby boom generation in German history (1945 to 1960s). With less than two children per household, such a blindly nationalist immigration and integration system needs to be rethought through.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
