In a speech to supporters, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday that multiculturalism in Germany has not met with success. She stressed that immigrants must learn to speak German and integrate into German society. Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have “utterly failed,” according to Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“This approach has failed, utterly failed,” said Merkel, head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), in a speech to the party’s young people’s association in Potsdam on Saturday. She added that not enough was done in the past to support the movement. “The failures of the last 30 or 40 years cannot be resolved so quickly,” she said.

The comments followed a similar speech from Christian Social Union (CSU) chief Horst Seehofer, sister party to the CDU, who on Friday evening declared his party’s stance against multiculturalism. “Multiculturalism is dead,” he said, to great applause.

Deutsche Welle,  October 2010

See also AFP, 16 October 2010

And “Turkish president concerned over growing anti-Muslim mood in Germany”, IRNA, 16 October 2010

Bavarian state premier Horst Seehofer continued his anti-immigrant attacks on Friday night, addressing the youth wing of the conservatives and telling them “multiculturalism is dead.”

“We as the (Christian Democratic) Union stand for the dominant German culture and against multiculturalism – multiculturalism is dead,” he said according to news magazine Der Spiegel.

Speaking at the Junge Union national meeting in Potsdam, Seehofer’s latest attack on the idea of Germany being a country of immigration followed his recent call to stop Turks and Arabs from moving to Germany.

Yet he said his speech was not a lurch to the right, rather an attempt to “stop the right-wing loonies,” he said, adding that “political seducers” must be deterred from parliament by addressing the concerns of voters.

Those who wanted to live in Germany had to be prepared to accept the daily culture of the country, he said, although did not specify how this should be defined.

Chancellor Angela Merkel was more moderate, Der Spiegel reported, but seemed to echo some of Seehofer’s sentiment when she said, “We feel bound to the Christian image of humanity, that is what defines us,” she said. Those who do not accept this, “are in the wrong place here.”

Germans should also talk about their values and their increasing alienation from religion, in order to affirm their sense of country and society, she added.

Regarding the idea of allowing highly-qualified people to come to Germany to fill the skills deficit, Seehofer said the emphasis should initially be on training unemployed people here before bringing people into the country. Germany should not become the “social security office for the whole world,” he said.

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Merkel presenting an award to anti-Muslim cartoonist Kurt Westergaard

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday Muslims must obey the constitution and not sharia law if they want to live in Germany, which is debating the integration of its 4 million-strong Muslim population.

In the furor following a German central banker’s blunt comments about Muslims failing to integrate, moderate leaders including President Christian Wulff have urged Germans to accept that “Islam also belongs in Germany.”

But whereas the media stressed Wulff’s comments about Islam, Merkel – the daughter of a Protestant pastor brought up in East Germany, who leads a predominantly Catholic party – said Wulff had emphasized Germany’s “Christian roots and its Jewish roots.”

“Now we obviously also have Muslims in Germany. But it’s important in regard to Islam that the values represented by Islam must correspond with our constitution,” said Merkel. “What applies here is the constitution, not sharia.”

Merkel said Germany needed imams “educated in Germany and who have their social roots here” and concluded: “Our culture is based on Christian and Jewish values and has been for hundreds of years, not to say thousands.”

Reuters, 6 October 2010