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The Heidelberg Manifesto of Xenophobic Professors (March 4, 1982)

Xenophobic ideas were not just the property of the radical fringe; such sentiments were also held by the respectable conservative professors who signed the Heidelberg Manifesto in 1982. The professors believed that immigration would dilute the German stock, arguing against it from a biological and racial standpoint.

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The Heidelberg Manifesto


With great concern, we observe the infiltration of the German Volk [people] through an influx of millions of foreigners and their families, the infiltration of our language, our culture, and our national traditions by foreign influences. Despite the recruitment ban, the number of registered foreigners rose by 309,000 in the year 1980 alone; 194,000 of these foreigners are Turks. A little more than half of the number of children needed to maintain our [German] population are being born each year. In their neighborhoods and workplaces, many Germans already feel like foreigners in their own land.

The federal government promoted the influx of foreigners on the basis of [a policy of] unbridled economic growth that is now recognized as questionable. Up to this point, the German population has not been informed of the significance and consequences of these actions. For this reason, we are calling for the establishment of a politically and ideologically independent coalition whose task is to preserve the German Volk and its spiritual identity on the basis of our occidental Christian heritage. Standing firmly on the foundation of the Basic Law, we oppose ideological nationalism, racism, and every form of right- and left-wing extremism.

In biological and cybernetic terms, peoples are living systems of a higher order with distinct system qualities that are passed on genetically and through tradition. The integration of large masses of non-German foreigners is therefore not possible without threatening the preservation of our people, and it will lead to the well-known ethnic catastrophes of multicultural societies.

Every people, including the Germans, has a natural right to preserve its identity and particular character in the place in which it resides. Respect for other peoples also necessitates their preservation, not their assimilation (‘Germanization’). We perceive Europe as an organism of peoples and nations that are worthy of preservation and that share a common history. ‘Every nation is one unique facet of a divine plan’ (Solzhenitsyn).

The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany is not based on the concept of a ‘nation’ as the sum of all peoples within a state. It is based instead on the concept of a ‘Volk’ [people], and of a German people at that. The federal president and the members of the federal government take this oath of office: ‘I swear that I will dedicate my energies to the good of the German Volk, advance its interests, and protect it from harm.’ In this way, the Basic Law prescribes the preservation of the German people.

The preamble of the Basic Law prescribes the goal of reunification. How is this to remain possible when the two parts are becoming ethnically foreign to each other? The current policy on foreigners, which promotes the development of a multiracial society, contradicts the Basic Law, which obliges all Germans of the Federal Republic to preserve and defend the living rights of our people.

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