Letter From Europe

A Continent Watching Anxiously Over the Melting Pot

December 15, 2004
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN

BERLIN, Dec. 14 - Imagine a former American president
publicly grumbling that it was a mistake for a certain
group to have been allowed to immigrate to the United
States - the Irish, say, or Jews, or Pakistanis. The
outrage would be justifiably loud.

But a former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, now 85,
recently declared that Germany should never have invited in
all those Turkish guest workers in the 1950's and 60's,
because, he suggested, multiculturalism can work only in an
authoritarian society.

The comment was not widely regarded as brilliant or wise,
but it caused no uproar; indeed, it was consistent with
many statements coming from German leaders lately on the
subject of ethnic and cultural minorities.

"Multiculturalism has failed, big time," Angela Merkel, the
almost certain conservative candidate for chancellor in the
next national elections, said recently. Many political
figures and commentators have been saying that immigrants
should accept what the Germans call the leitkultur, the
dominant culture, as their own, or they should leave.