(pronounced ), literally 'over-foreignization', is a German-language term used to refer to either a perceived excess of immigration, or the making of something out to be more alien than it actually is — i.e., intentional or active alienation. The word is a nominalization compounded from über meaning 'over' or 'overly' and meaning 'foreign'. In that alienation also translates to "Entfremdung", there exists at least one other political dimension to this term as well though.
Overview The term is colloquially applied to various processes, but is nowhere precisely defined. As a buzzword, it is intended to characterize external influences as “alien,” “excessive,” and threatening, and thus to devalue them.Brockhaus Enzyklopädie. 17th edition, Wiesbaden 1966–1974.
The Duden shows its change in meaning: it first listed the noun in 1929 and explained it economically as the “absorption of too much foreign capital.” In 1934, “infiltration of foreign races” was added, and in 1941 “infiltration of foreign Volkstum (ethnicity/national character).”Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-11-019549-6, . From 1956 onward, “foreigners” replaced the term “foreign races.” “Foreign Volkstum” continued to be listed. An example given was: “a country is over-foreignized.”Paul Grebe (ed.): The Great Duden, Volume 1. Dudenverlag of the Bibliographisches Institut, 1956, p. 698 (entry “Überfremdung”). Only in 1958 were the qualifiers from 1934 removed.Horst Dieter Schlosser: There Will Be Two Germanys: Contemporary History and Language in Postwar Germany 1945–1949. Peter Lang, 2005, ISBN 3-631-53705-0, p. 72. Since 1991, the verb “überfremden” has been defined in the spelling dictionary as “to permeate with foreign influences, for a foreign influence to become dominant in something.” Since 1993, the noun has been explained with the example: “the fear of over-foreignization (of the presence of too many foreigners living here permanently) is unfounded.”Duden – German Universal Dictionary. 3rd expanded edition 2006, ISBN 3-411-05506-5 (entries “überfremden”, “Überfremdung” online)
Only in Wirtschaftswissenschaft (economics) does the term serve as a Fachterminus (technical term). Some Sprachpflegers (language purists) use it to criticize anglicisms.Harald Süss: Loss of Language: On the Over-foreignization of German. Bund für deutsche Schrift und Sprache, 2001, ISBN 3-930540-13-4. Right-wing extremists in particular use it as a polemical term to portray religious, ethnic, racial, or cultural Minderheiten (minorities) as a threat to the “native population,” their culture, and/or nation. They associate it with political demands for exclusion. This usage originates in the ideology of Volkstum and the völkisch movement of the 19th century in German-speaking countries. However, Populists and democratic actors also sometimes use the term in debates about Ausländerpolitik (policy toward foreigners), migration, integration, and asylum law.
The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (GfdS) chose “Überfremdung” as the German Unword of the Year in 1993, giving the following justification:
Linguistics, as well as literary, political, and social sciences, also criticize the term because of its vagueness, its use in the Sprache des Nationalsozialismus (language of National Socialism), and its continuing negative Konnotation (connotation) as a key term for stirring up sentiment.Alexander Pollak, Ruth Wodak: The Missed Scandal: A Discourse-Historical Study of a Vienna Court Judgment. Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-7076-0134-X, pp. 10 and 150.Hartmut Wilke: sicetnon. Journal for Philosophy and Culture, November 20, 2005.
The word is related to terms in various languages: foreign infiltration, foreign penetration, French , , , Spanish , Italian , and , which have all been used at various times to rally xenophobic sentiment.
Political usage Germany Imperial era Even before the founding of the German Empire, German nationalists such as Ernst Moritz Arndt had polemizised against immigration from Eastern Europe and warned of a “flood” of foreigners and their culture, especially Jews. From 1871 onward, these arguments increasingly drew on patterns of pseudoscientific racism. Even where this was rejected, the own people was often viewed as a collective that, in the sense of Social Darwinism, had to assert itself aggressively against other “ethnic groups” both internally and externally and to enforce the assimilation of minorities.
A clear sign of the spread of this attitude in bourgeois and academic circles was the Berlin Antisemitism Dispute. In his essay “Our Prospects” (“Unsere Aussichten”), Heinrich von Treitschke spoke of the “foreign ethnicity” of a Polish “tribe of Jews”, which stood “much more alien to the European and especially the Germanic nature” than other minorities. Many naturalized Jews were also “German-speaking Orientals”. They allegedly misused their dominance over the press to defame Christianity and patriotism. “Semitism” bore “heavy co-responsibility” for the “brazen greed of the founding-era swindle” and for the “shabby materialism of our time”. “The Jew who sells out his neighbours through usury” sat in “thousands of German villages”. The antisemitic movement of the time was a “natural reaction of the Germanic national feeling against a foreign element”. Because German national feeling was underdeveloped, “we were therefore so long defenceless against foreign influence”.Walter Böhlich: Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit. pp. 6–12. Judaism, as a confession, must never be placed on equal footing with Christianity. The religious Jews’ adherence to the biblical idea of being the chosen people was a form of “racial arrogance”. Only their adaptation to Germanness could permanently prevent their expulsion.Walter Böhlich: Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit. p. 44. In doing so, Treitschke called into question the recently achieved Jewish emancipation and made antisemitism—previously largely despised in bourgeois society—socially acceptable.Jörg Schneider: Die jüdische Gemeinde in Hildesheim von 1871–1942. (PDF; 157 kB), dissertation 12. Confrontation with antisemitism up to 1933.
From 1879, and especially from 1893 onward, several specially founded parties, associations, and clubs represented antisemitic propaganda about “overforeignization”. At the beginning of the First World War, this initially receded behind common patriotism. The imperial government brought foreign forced labourers, including about 35,000 Eastern European Jews, to Germany for its armaments industry. From then on, antisemitic groups intensified their agitation against “Jewish overforeignization”, also in order to target Jews who had long since assimilated into German society.Antisemitism in the First World War DHM and HdG.
In the German Empire, nation-building was promoted from the 1870s onward, and the Catholic Poles, who formed the largest minority in the eastern provinces, were subjected to a policy of Germanisation.Christiane Reinecke: Grenzen der Freizügigkeit. Migrationskontrolle in Großbritannien und Deutschland, 1880–1930. Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-486-59745-5, p. 84. In German self-perception, Germans were considered industrious, culturally superior to Poles, and civilized, while Poles served as a negative contrast.Christiane Reinecke: Grenzen der Freizügigkeit. Migrationskontrolle in Großbritannien und Deutschland, 1880–1930. Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-486-59745-5, p. 84. In 1885, regulations were introduced in Prussia for the expulsion of Poles. Between 30,000 and 40,000 Poles, including Jews, were expelled from four Prussian provinces.Knuth Dose: Foreign workers and the bourgeois state: Genesis and function of state policy on foreigners and foreign law. From the German Empire to the Federal Republic of Germany. Express Edition, Berlin 1985, p. 30. The influx of Polish workers into the eastern provinces was a consequence of the migration of Germans and inland Poles to the western industrial cities of the kingdom. In total, 400,000 Poles from the Prussian-occupied territories migrated to the West.Ulrich Herbert: History of foreigner policy in Germany. Seasonal workers, forced labourers, guest workers, refugees. Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47477-2, p. 74. The ban on Polish immigration was lifted after just five years, due to consideration for East Elbian landowners who depended on cheap labour.Christiane Reinecke: Grenzen der Freizügigkeit. Migrationskontrolle in Großbritannien und Deutschland, 1880–1930. Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-486-59745-5, p. 85. In the West, official pressure and social exclusion ultimately did not lead to the intended isolation of Polish miners and industrial workers. On the contrary, the repression, which was accompanied by professional emancipation, led to increased integration of the one-third of Poles who remained in the country.
Weimar Republic This tendency continued in the Weimar Republic and became more radical. The church historian Wolfgang Gerlach pointed out how especially bourgeois parties such as the DNVP and the media used immigration of Ostjuden (Eastern European Jews) after 1918 against all already assimilated local Jews. Of 250 ministers in the Weimar Republic, only four were Jewish:
The German Academic Association adopted in 1925 unanimously a motion stating:
cited after Sigrid Wölbern: Antisemitism in the educated bourgeoisie from the German Empire to the Weimar Republic.
German Volk studies, especially Ostforschung (research on the East) and Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung (folk and cultural land research), understood itself from the 1920s onward as a “fighting science” committed to Germanness (“Deutschtum”) (Werner Conze, Theodor Schieder, Walter Frank). It now attempted to establish “overforeignization” as a scientific concept. In doing so, processes of integration and assimilation were portrayed as dangers that could lead to a “Umvolkung” (ethnic replacement) of German “ethnic groups”. For this purpose, concepts such as “Volksgemeinschaft” (people’s community), “Lebensraum” (living space), “cultural space”, “customs” or “culture/civility” were developed, which were to be protected against “overforeignization”.
The re-establishment of the Polish state was the visible sign of the loss of some East Prussian provinces as well as the end of the German Empire and the Prussian kingdom. Not only völkisch movements, which after 1920 demanded German labourers instead of Polish workers and organised associations as well as travel and accommodation for mostly young volunteers, but also the government under the Centre Party politician Heinrich Brüning planned to prevent an alleged Polonisation through the settlement of German small farmers in the eastern territories.
The word appeared for the first time in the Duden dictionary in 1929 and was later popularised by Joseph Goebbels.Karl-Heinz Brackmann, Renate Birkenhauer: NS-Deutsch: “self-evident” terms and slogans from the time of National Socialism. Straelen 2001, ISBN 3-89107-021-7, revised edition 2015.
Era of National Socialism The NSDAP made the defence against an alleged Jewish and foreign “overforeignization” a central goal from the very beginning. Its 25-point programme of 1920 excluded Jews from the “German national community” (“Volksgemeinschaft”) from the outset. A foreigner law for all non-Germans, the expulsion of all foreigners in the event of supply crises, the dismissal of non-citizens from all public offices, etc., were adopted as party objectives. With retroactive effect to 2 August 1914, immigration of “non-Germans” was to be prohibited; i.e., all foreign workers recruited during the First World War were to be expelled.
Even during the Great Depression, when antisemitic propaganda was temporarily reduced by order of the party leadership, the rhetoric of overforeignization remained active, now more strongly combined with anti-capitalist references.