In 1970, twelve years after he had arrived in Germany from his native hometown of Isfahan, Arash (as I call him) had earned his first million in Deutsche Marks. When I got to know him in the 1990s, he was a wealthy businessman dealing in Oriental carpets, possessing three passports, and invested in real estate. He was respected in the Saarbruecken business community and by the local establishment. He loved to tell his story to customers entering his shop because they were interested in the carpets he had in store, large or small, old or new, hanging at the walls, folded, lying in big heaps on the side, leaving two aisles in the middle, one for his impressive office desk, the other for a worn sofa, low table, and several aged and squeaky chairs. Inevitably, clients were asked to sit down and have tea and some conversation, allowing Arash to analyze his or her standing, living situation, and knowledge of carpets before coming up with his price. The couch session sold. No other local dealer could top it, no matter the quality of his merchandise. Over the years, the sofa had become a popular meeting place. His conversation barely focused on a particular rug (always indicating that the price asked for included a personal and special discount) before shifting to the manifold encounters, attempts, obstacles, and detours on his way to riches.

Saarbrücken is known for its picturesque old town, vibrant cultural scene, and rich industrial history with a total population of 184.483 out of which 33.4%. has a migratory background.

An Immigrant’s Journey

Arash’s career was exceptional. Having spent a lazy summer on the Roman beaches before proceeding to his German university destination, he had stepped off the night train from Rome in Cologne without a penny in his pockets because he had been robbed while asleep. He found his way to the cafeteria of the Cologne University Campus, fed off leftovers, and contacted an Iranian compatriot who improvised a place for him to sleep on the floor in his dorm room. Soon, he went to the local labor bureau, which provided him with a factory job, and he received a payment up front to cover necessary expenses. The German economy was booming, and the demand for unskilled labor resulted in an increasing influx of foreign workforce. But Arash wasn’t intent on staying a factory worker. He had come to Germany as a graduate of the Isfahan Lycée to become an engineer, attracted by the legendary if redoubtable reputation of German industry for him, German ingenuity was exemplified by the Adler sewing machine, made in Germany, which his mother, wife to a textile retailer and a busy mother of five sons and a daughter, had put into skillful use for her family. He was, of course, well aware of the German crimes against European Jewry. Yet, less than thirteen years after total defeat, the country seemed to be internally pacified and recovering at a miraculous speed, in stark contrast to his economically and politically languishing home country. In short, Germany looked like a land of possibilities.

After several months of paid factory labor, he continued his journey to Saarbruecken and started to study engineering. He was not alone. The influx of Iranian students to Saarbruecken University had been stimulated by the Saar state, which, after an embattled referendum, had just been released from the French post-war occupation and integrated into the German Federal Republic. To attract students from outside the state, tuition fees were waived. Saarbrücken presented itself as a center of the emerging European Economic Community.  Familiar with the French language and lifestyle, Arash considered proximity to the Lothringia region an additional bonus. Plus, the border would provide a safe exit in case his Sephardic background might become a critical issue. Soon enough, it would.

One of his professors habitually garnished his engineering lectures with anti-Semitic quips. One day, Arash decided this was just too much to bear. He walked to the blackboard, asking the lecturer whether he had ever encountered a real Jew… and he knocked that professor to the ground. In hindsight, he considered this act of vigilantism stupid. By then, he had learned to appeal to the German judicial system and wasn’t shy to do so. After the violent incident, however, the judiciary wasn’t called against him, either.  He was arrested and placed in a police car. When the car driver headed out of town and to the French border instead of to the jailhouse, he was sure he would be shot.  But the policemen just dropped him somewhere in the vast Lothringian Forest, with no money, food, map, or documents, but alive and unharmed. He walked right back, taking more than a day to return to the city. Upon his arrival, he went directly to the Saar Ministry of the Interior.  A government official showed sympathy and, probably aware of a potential international political scandal, proposed a low-key solution to the student if he kept quiet. It would be impossible for him to continue his university studies. Instead, he would be allowed to stay as a tradesman, provided with a trade license, and his visa status would be changed accordingly. Arash agreed immediately. While assisting his father as a boy, he had learned the textile retail trade and knew where his chances lay in the local market. Walking the city streets, he had been approached more than once: Did he, by chance, have Persian carpets to sell? Demand was such that before long, he would run a carpet workshop, managed by a brother, in Isfahan, before the Revolution finished this branch of his business.

Iran exported $19.1 million worth of knotted carpets to Germany in 2023, and Afghanistan’s carpet exports for 2024-2025 were valued at $15 million.

{Read: “Great Expectations, Great Disappointments: Protecting the Mandate of the European Union,” by B. Ebert}

The Universalism of the Immigrant Experience

Arash’s story is one of a kind. It deserves at least another five chapters: the chances he took to overcome his fragile legal status, his way to business success, the escape of his parents, brothers, and sister from the Iranian Revolution, his confrontations with anti-Semites, and, finally, his long demise into a messy old man. Instead, I’d like to focus on the chapter of his story already told because it illustrates, albeit in an extreme way, a pattern repeated in the success stories of other immigrants in Germany. Most had grown up in well-connected families of middle-class status. They were too smart to be content with limited career options and the insecure economic and political situation at home. They had acquired communicative skills and had learned manners before they migrated to post-war Germany. There, they used their talents, knowledge, and wits to identify opportunities they could exploit, raising the necessary funds until a bank opened credit lines for them. For some time, the carpet business yielded extraordinary profits to Iranian shop owners; when it crumbled because of a change in clients’ tastes, travel agencies, restaurants, real estate, or import-export agencies proved viable alternatives. The growing number of worker immigrants generated profitable markets in retail and fast-food, barber shops, and nail studios, dominated by compatriots with minimal education and feeble resources but lots of entrepreneurial energy and an acute sense for business opportunities.

Once settled comfortably, some of their children, nationalized Germans, would venture into business studies, science, or politics. Arash’s son obtained a university diploma in computer science at the local university and eventually started his own IT consulting company in a German tech-business hotspot. In doing so, he followed a quasi-universal pattern of advancement in developed societies, first established in Europe and North America with the onset of industrial production, political emancipation, and global commerce, prominent in the U.S., but lacking public attention and awareness of career options in Germany.

Immigration stories may take a bad turn, however, and it must not be ignored that fraud, violence, money laundering, and trafficking inevitably increase with immigration. The number of migrant prisoners has grown out of proportion to the number of jailed natives. But most legal trespassing is petty, deals with finance and tax evasion, and never makes it to court. Natives and migrants both perform these kinds of criminal acts. The most frequent delinquencies have become a way of life for segments of the population relying on social welfare payments. Of course, initially, most immigrants do. Welfare payments are calculated to provide for the necessities of life, including healthcare. They are based on the understanding that those receiving them must learn German, improve their professional qualifications, and look for regular jobs. But for unskilled laborers with some talent in crafts, it’s easier to earn money on the side in a booming, irregular job market. Those jobs, in turn, result in cheap services for car maintenance, house painting, plumbing, and other jobs, and provide people with low, regular income, but not that alone. It’s a traditional sign of a higher class to employ servants. Besides a tidy home at a low cost, the informal job market has increased the options for social distinction. In short, welfare payments subsidize incomes, low AND high, both directly and indirectly. Immigrants with limited professional ambition find this income model particularly attractive, while hard-working regular taxpayers (not all of them profiting from cheap services) are increasingly irritated. But this model, long since ingrained into everyday life, proves difficult to control. It has become a topic for grassroots radical politics, not least because of connotations supporting openly racist arguments. But migrants can’t be reduced to skin color, language deficiencies, religious backgrounds, a particular legal status, or social stratum. This, also, can be upsetting, especially because Germany has indeed become a retreat for war criminals and torturers, a promised land for criminals in the service of infamous governments and warlords. This ugly, hidden reality only comes to light if those crimes are tried in Germany. They rarely are.

A refugee holds a photo of Angela Merkel at Munich Hauptbahnhof on September 5th, 2015. Photo: DPA

Despite all this, the positive effects of immigration, especially for local economies, can’t be ignored. Migrants are drawn to prospering metropolitan areas, like Frankfurt or Berlin, where citizens with a migrant background constitute approximately a quarter of the population. In less prosperous regions, migrant businesses have become the backbone of the local economy. According to a study commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation, by 2018, one in five self-employed firms in Germany was run by migrants. Increasingly, young men with migrant backgrounds have become master artisans, earning good money in the building industry or with a bakery or halal butcher shop, their sisters have started businesses in geriatric nursing, as paramedics, or hairdressers, creating a significant number of jobs for family members, fellow migrants, and Germans. Regardless of passport, most immigrants develop an attachment to their neighborhood, town, or city, or to popular festivities. A Turkish cobbler in my Northern German hometown participated in the Cologne Carnival every year in a clownish costume, getting drunk and having a merry time. A Syrian (now German) family took every opportunity to take their children on sightseeing tours in the region, and brought them to Berlin, Munich, and Hamburg; a Turkish businessman participated in guided tours to cathedrals. They encourage their children to speak German because they want them to succeed by following the pattern of success that people like Arash have defined. For many immigrants, the question of inclusion boils down to two essential steps: language proficiency, defined by one’s professional standing (i.e., different for tilers, carpet dealers, or lawyers), and the eligibility for a German passport. These upstart families are the core of a new entrepreneurial social stratum in a saturated society, lamenting the demise of traditional civic strata.

{Read: “Germany at a Crossroads: Will It Rise Again as Europe’s Anchor?” by N. Nojumi}

Becoming German

Language proficiency, economic success, passport — does this turn immigrants into nationals?  Many Germans find it difficult to accept that financial well-being is not necessarily founded on a training certificate, a university degree obtained close to home, and lifelong membership in a professional corporation, and that German citizenship is no longer bound to genealogical roots in the German populace at large. After the war, debates on German identity became more dynamic. In the decades after 1945, emotional attachments focused on local and regional rather than national affiliations.  Was there a German nation, indeed? Or two of them? Were they defined by their factual, ideological, or historical boundaries?

People walk through a demolished section of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Image: Stiftung Berliner Mauer/E. Kasperski

After 1989, reunification was overshadowed by accelerated technological change, grave economic inequality, and an immigrant population disparity. According to official statistics, approximately 15% of the population has an immigrant background. The whole gamut of exclusionary and inclusionary practices has by now become confused and put into question, sometimes accentuated by violent acts. On the other hand, there’s emphatical grass-roots help for immigrants: providing food, shelter, and assistance in coping with immigration administration to refugees, translation, and introduction to the German language – in short, integrative acts and attitudes as a positive contribution to inclusion into a concept of nation perceived as part of a global citizenship in the making, eventually transcending regional and national boundaries while preserving and enhancing national cultural assets as civic resources for integration and development (François Jullien).

That’s how the ultimate aspirations of Arash and his likes may be assessed: be it an idiosyncratic museum project collecting an assemblage of oriental carpets, furniture, and replicated artwork of significance for cultural achievements, inscribing itself into the tradition of collections as a body of reference for lifestyle objects, be it poems in German language, theatrical and musical productions, or associations for cultural self-improvement and empowerment against discrimination. A substantial amount of energy is invested in projects like these, intended to have a lasting impact, but they often meet with little awareness and appreciation from the local establishment.

The numerous initiatives supporting refugees can be seen as an attempt to rebuild the nation by uniting in this charitable effort and transcending societal barriers. Opposition against this project has begun to take shape in radical and sometimes violent political movements, based on vague recollections of previous concepts of nation, “Volk” and “Stamm” no longer providing places in the present society. A new divide of the public space is emerging between those who try to improve the reputation of Germany by showing solidarity to strangers and those who want to preserve Germanness (or what they perceive it to be) by closing ranks.

A mound on the edge of a neglected fortification wall, built of huge stones representing the history of the earth itself, with a spiraling ascent crowned by a miniature park, may be seen as the most aspiring immigrant project, created and put into effect by an agronomist of Iranian descent who turned his knowledge, acquired at Giessen University, into a small fortune as a merchant before he fled Iran and was appointed a professor at his Alma Mater upon his return. It was meant to outlast a millennium, referencing ancient civilizations in Iranian landscapes, prehistoric funeral monuments in Europe, and citing baroque grottos in princely parks. Yet its significance produced little public interest in town. After his demise, the mound became part of a beer garden, run by his daughter, and was almost completely removed after the property was sold.

Despite all the good-willed projects on both sides, simply forgetting about people’s otherness in time is the prevailing way of social inclusion. Given the violence inherent in the concepts of nation and “Volk”, their peaceful demise may not be the worst result; the achievements of Germans and migrants alike are merging into the million-piece mosaic of a thriving global culture.