Chemnitz, City of Diversity – Really?!

By Victoria Graul

In May 2009 Chemnitz was officially honored to be a “place of diversity” by the German government. The Saxonian city shares its title with 153 local authorities within Germany that showed their commitment against xenophobia and right-wing extremism. The success of integration policies for migrants accompanies this caption. But why was this distinction not heard by the people of Chemnitz? Is the regional media coverage about the issue of migration inadequate?

That Chemnitz is not a xenophobic place is not only shown by its “City of Diversity”-title, but also by the sparse success of the NPD [National Democratic Party of Germany] in the city council elections. They could not convince with paroles like “criminal foreigners out of here” and scored merely three per cent of all votes. The reason for the woolly treatment of the issue of integration in Chemnitz is that the most of the attention is payed to other topics.

Chemnitz is known to have the oldest population in the whole of Germany. According to the Statistical Office of the federal state of Saxony in 2007 11,488 people, or five per cent of in Chemnitz’ inhabitants, were migrants. The “genaration 60 plus” amount to about 32 per cent of the population. It is therfore understandable that the regional media focuses their topics on issues concerning pensioners, like health and security.

Furthermore, Chemnitz is trying to get rid of its demographic problem to be a “pensioners’ city” by the means of an image campagne called “Chemnitz-City of Modernity” that works closely with regional media in order for the city to stay attractive for young people and as an economic hotspot.
The topic of integration in the region of Chemnitz is quite negligible in relation to the number of foreigners with migration backround in other big cities like Duisburg, where 82,151 or 16.5 per cent of the population are foreigners.

However, the regional media is to be held reponsible that Chemnitz does not feature as a “City of Diversity” in the population’s word-of-mouth. Strictly speaking it only proclaims its role as the good samaritans in programmes as opposed to addressing the problems of minorities. This form of coverage hinders the integration of non-Germans. A more intense debate about how reports are broadcasted would be appropriate if the media would like the attention of a non-German audience and therefore contribute their share toward successful Integration.

Victoria Graul is a 22 year old student of European Studies at the Technical University of Chemnitz. She writes for the university newspaper “Tuchfühlung”
and is also a member of the student-cabaret „MehrTUerer“.