The National Team Re-Defines German Identity

Germany played Costa Rica in the opening match of the World Cup. Miroslav Klose, a Pole by birth, scored two goals for his new country – and Germany won the match 4-2. Both Klose and Lukas Podolski, another German player of Polish origin, did their best in the match against Poland, though without avail. Finally David Odonkor put through a lovely cross for Oliver Neuville to slide into, feet first. The result was 1-0, for Germany. Odonkor’s father is from Ghana, and Neuville was born in Switzerland.

Gerald Asamoah, another German striker, was born in Ghana. He took the German citizenship, advisedly, before the 2002 World Cup. Kevin Kuranyi, whom everybody was expecting to make it to the team but who wasn’t nominated in the end, was born in Brazil. Patrick Owomoyela, who suffered the same fate as Kuranyi so far as joining the national team was concerned, has Nigerian origins.

Five out of six strikers of ‘foreign’ origin

Interestingly enough, these players come from, or have connections with countries which have qualified for the World Cup. As such, they might have been playing against Germany, had the circumstances been different.

“Many people were of the opinion that I should play for Ghana, but I made the decision which I thought was correct,” was Asamoah’s comment. The humour of being termed the “blackest player” ever to play for Germany, as the London “Independent” called him, has not escaped him. Nevertheless: “It’s an honour to play for Germany,” Asamoah says.

Asamoah is not the first. As a matter of fact, two “dark-skinned” players wore the jersey of the Federal Republic in the ‘seventies: both Erwin Kostedde and Jimmy Hartwig were sons of coloured GI’s from the USA. It didn’t prevent them from becoming the butt of racist jokes.

Racism in football

Asamoah, who plays for the Bundesliga club Schalke 04, has also been the target of racist remarks. They threw bananas at him in Cottbus, in eastern Germany. And a right-wing party even went to the extent of distributing photographs of Asamoah with the inscription: “No, Gerald, you are not Germany”.

“That really hurt,” Asamoah told reporters. “The battle against right-wing extremism might well be a mission for the future, when I’m done with football.” In which case, he’d have a lot to do. “Though right-wing extremism in Germany is not as pervasive as in some neighbouring countries, racist violence has been increasing since the German unification. More than a hundred people have died because of right-wing violence,” is the way Andreas Merx comments the situation. He is part of a project on “football and integration” initiated by the Heinrich Böll Fund. “Comparatively fewer ‘foreigners’ live in the eastern parts of Germany. That’s why coloured or black persons, in effect anybody who looks different and is therefore conspicuous, can become the target of right-wing extremists.”

The national team reflects the ethnic diversity of Germany

According to the Federal Statistical Office, among the 82 million people living in Germany at least 19 percent have an immigrant background. “It was about time that this ethnic diversity was reflected in the national team,” is the opinion of Hans-Georg Soeffner, who is the director of a project on “assimilation and football” of the University of Constance. “Apart from that, football gives immigrant families a chance of improving their social status.”

Turks are under-represented in the national team

It’s a bit strange that the largest group of immigrants in Germany, the Turks, are hardly represented in the national team – the only honourable exception being the ex-German international Mehmet Scholl, whose father is a Turk. One reason for this anomaly could be that many of the top Turkish players prefer to play for – Turkey – though they could have taken the German nationality with ease. As Merx put it:

“Part of the secret is that the Turkish football association leaves no stone unturned to recruit good players from Germany and from the rest of Europe. But a second reason could be the discrimination that these Turkish players experience at the hands of their German team mates at the lower levels of the German football league.”

Even Poles are open game in Germany, with any number of racist jokes about their being petty car-thieves. There’s the further myth that Poles take away jobs from the Germans. But those among the “Auslaender”, the foreigners, the immigrants, who’ve made it to the top, like these footballers in the German national team, have turned into role models for their own youth, apart from being respected and admired by millions of Germans.

A billboard spot wraps it up nicely:

“Gerald, you are Germany!”