Diversity in Germany
The East is Diverse: The Many Faces of Civic Engagement and Volunteering in East Germany
Long before the 2024 state elections, the growing right-wing sentiment and xenophobia in east Germany had been the subject of many a current debate. Here, we show the flip side; namely, the far-reaching civil society commitment to diversity and tolerance in the east German federal states. In her guest commentary, Katarina Peranić from the German Foundation for Civic Engagement and Volunteering details what east Germany’s many associations and initiatives now need.
Where first comes to mind when you hear a term like ‘diversity’? The answer is probably an urban center like Berlin, and not a mid-sized town in Germany’s southern Thuringia. Yet Beulwitz, an urban district in Saalfeld’s northwest, undoubtedly holds its own against more famously multicultural neighborhoods like Berlin’s Neukölln. In fact, 75% of Beulwitz’s population have family roots abroad, compared to just 50% in Neukölln. Admittedly, the total population of Saalfeld-Beulwitz numbers less than 1,000, compared to some 300,000 in Neukölln, but that’s a different question.
Ever since Germany’s ‘long summer of migration’ in 2015/16, the number of people without German citizenship has also risen sharply in the ‘new states of Germany’, namely Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. And that is not the only way in which the former East is more diverse than many first assume: Every year, Neustrelitz, a small town in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania where the German Foundation for Civic Engagement and Volunteering (DSEE) is based, also hosts its own LGBTQIA+ pride march.
You only need to look at the winners of the machen! ideas competition to gain an impression of the diverse nature of engagement across Germany’s east. The competition, which Parliamentary State Secretary for East Germany Carsten Schneider (SPD) has been organizing together with the DSEE since 2023, is an impressive testament to civil society resourcefulness and creativity in the east. Yet it also shines a light on the challenges that those committed to change face in running their projects, such as the association “Break the Fake” from Naunhof, Saxony, which organizes fact-checking workshops to counter disinformation online, or the “VfL Kalbe / Milde” from Saxony-Anhalt, which uses basketball as a tool for promoting tolerance in hotspot neighborhoods. Or there’s the youth editorial team Saalfeld-Beulwitz, which platforms refugee voices.
The Challenges of Civic Engagement and Volunteering in East Germany
The results of the September 2024 state elections in Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg left many across both east and west with some substantial food for thought. Meanwhile, a study by the Hochschule Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences suggests activists working in east Germany to bolster democracy and fight right-wing extremism are more likely to experience physical attacks and damage to property than those in west Germany. “More than 14% of them regularly think of changing role, while 7% are considering ending their pro-democracy work altogether,” explain Tina Leber, Fabian Mertens, and Beate Küpper, summarizing the results of the survey.
Certainly, the hate and inflammatory propaganda spread by right-wing extremist groups in particular on social media are finding a real-world embodiment out on the streets far more frequently in the new federal states, a serious point of concern for many working in the field. This makes recruiting new activists a particular challenge, not least as civic engagement in east Germany has traditionally had less of a socio-political focus, something David Kuhn, Peter Schubert, and Birthe Tahmaz from Zivilgesellschaft in Zahlen (ZiviZ) illustrate with the example of volunteering as “leisure and socializing”, an area of civic engagement that is far more pronounced in the east.
Furthermore, we must take into account the lived east German reality of comparatively drastic experiences of transformation, a phenomenon which continues to this day since the watershed transformation of 1989/90. West Germans often attempt to downplay the aforementioned influx of people without German citizenship to the new federal states since 2015/16, arguing that the figure in the east currently stands at around 10 percent – far behind the percentage in the western federal states. Yet this relativization fails to acknowledge the fact that this 10 percent increase represents a threefold rise since 2014.
"Designing and facilitating these changes, processes which largely play out in associations and initiatives, in sports and culture, or in the preservation of local heritage, takes time. Time that seems to be slipping through the fingers of east German civil society in the face of the current crises."
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Beyond the challenge of social diversity, there are manifold other transformation processes to manage, not least digitalization and climate change. No wonder, then, that east Germany is experiencing an increasing “transformational ennui”, as Steffen Mau, for instance, addresses in his book “Ungleich vereint” [“Unequally united”] .
Mobilizing Forces for Diversity and Tolerance in East Germany
Yet despite all the problems and challenges, there remains an impressive energy, creativity, and resourcefulness among east German civil society. This is clear not only from the 200 prize winners each year of the machen! competition for ideas. It is also worth remembering that three quarters of today’s associations in the new federal states were founded only after German reunification in 1990. As things stand, there are on average 7.9 associations per 1,000 people in Germany’s east. In the west, conversely, there are just 7.3. In total, some 100,000 non-profit organizations are currently active in the east. It is evident from the foundation landscape, however, that civic engagement in the new federal states differs from that in the west: In the east, financially strong foundations are traditionally the exception, while civic foundations mobilize far greater levels of engagement here than in west Germany.
Civic engagement in the new federal states is not limited to the local level; instead it is pooled and brought to public awareness, as the example of DaMOst, the umbrella association for migrant organizations in east Germany, goes to show. Their project “JUGENDSTIL”, for instance, leaves no doubt as to just how much innovation there is in youth (post-)migrant civic engagement. Similarly telling is the engagement from “Freistil – Jugend engagiert in Sachsen-Anhalt” [Freestyle – youth civic engagement in Saxony-Anhalt], where young activists – both with and without a migrant background – can find contacts for their projects, network with other activists, and explore funding opportunities.
Diversity is the buzzword of our time. Companies, authorities and associations use it as a figurehead. But what does it actually mean? How do we create real diversity? And where is discrimination still present or even increasing - we want to get to the bottom of these questions in this dossier.
Still, we cannot project the achievements of east German activists over the past decades into the future for the abovementioned reasons. Further mobilizing civil society forces in east Germany represents a task for us all, one that requires an honest interest in the (civil) society of the new federal states that extends beyond crises and catastrophes. It requires an appreciation for east German achievements, history, and traditions. And it requires the very same things that civic engagement and volunteering rely on across the board: appreciation, recognition, and practical support for those who stand up for our democracy and social cohesion.