On 13th of July 2014, at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, crowds of thousands waved their proud black, red and gold banners to celebrate the country’s World Cup victories. Every German in the stadium stood up and started to belt out as one voice the first line of the national anthem: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt!" which literally translates to “Germany, Germany above all, above all in the world” declaring to all the nations that there is now the new, ultimate champion of football. Germany, the most populous nation in the European Union, possesses not only one of the largest economies in the world but also one of the world’s largest markets for importers and exporters. Many would even praise Germany’s
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Birthright citizenship was first introduced by Bavaria in 1818 and then finally implemented by the German Nationality Law of 1913 (Fessler). The purpose of the 1913 law, which was solidified by the Constitution of 1919, was to supplement, rather than replace, the citizenship of the individual states within the federation. The key principle of this policy was that German citizenship refers to a “community of descent”, with little regard for birthplace and residence. After the collapse of the Weimar Republic, however, this blood-based definition of citizenship was easily manipulated by the Nazi regime for its genocidal purposes (Fessler). Upon coming to power, the Nazis quickly abolished regional citizenship and created a unitary state. They also cancelled the naturalisations that had taken place in the Weimar period, revoked the German citizenship of those viewed as “having violated a duty of loyalty to the German Empire or the “German Nation”, and withdrew the citizenship rights of German Jews (Fessler). In short, the Nazis took the birthright citizenship to its extreme, using it as a tool for racial hierarchy and mass …show more content…
Yet the old law remained in effect for two main practical and political reasons. First, hundreds of thousands of “ethnic Germans” scattered around Eastern Europe were facing significant post-war recriminations, and allowing them to return to Germany was considered a basic and fundamental human rights issue. Second, East German citizens who managed to leave communist East Germany, either voluntarily or by expulsion, were automatically granted West German citizenship upon arrival in the FRG, a policy that helped to put pressure on the East German regime. After German reunification in 1990 and the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991 however, both of these reasons for maintaining such a broad interpretation of principle of residence became outdated and impractical (Banerjee). Most obviously, the second reason no longer served any purpose, since the disappearance of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) meant that all East Germans automatically became citizens of the FRG on 3 October 1990. The grounds for the first reason became increasingly difficult to justify, as the collapse of communism allowed and encouraged vast numbers of residents from Eastern Europe to claim their German lineage, despite their ever more remote ancestry
Birthright citizenship was first introduced by Bavaria in 1818 and then finally implemented by the German Nationality Law of 1913 (Fessler). The purpose of the 1913 law, which was solidified by the Constitution of 1919, was to supplement, rather than replace, the citizenship of the individual states within the federation. The key principle of this policy was that German citizenship refers to a “community of descent”, with little regard for birthplace and residence. After the collapse of the Weimar Republic, however, this blood-based definition of citizenship was easily manipulated by the Nazi regime for its genocidal purposes (Fessler). Upon coming to power, the Nazis quickly abolished regional citizenship and created a unitary state. They also cancelled the naturalisations that had taken place in the Weimar period, revoked the German citizenship of those viewed as “having violated a duty of loyalty to the German Empire or the “German Nation”, and withdrew the citizenship rights of German Jews (Fessler). In short, the Nazis took the birthright citizenship to its extreme, using it as a tool for racial hierarchy and mass …show more content…
Yet the old law remained in effect for two main practical and political reasons. First, hundreds of thousands of “ethnic Germans” scattered around Eastern Europe were facing significant post-war recriminations, and allowing them to return to Germany was considered a basic and fundamental human rights issue. Second, East German citizens who managed to leave communist East Germany, either voluntarily or by expulsion, were automatically granted West German citizenship upon arrival in the FRG, a policy that helped to put pressure on the East German regime. After German reunification in 1990 and the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991 however, both of these reasons for maintaining such a broad interpretation of principle of residence became outdated and impractical (Banerjee). Most obviously, the second reason no longer served any purpose, since the disappearance of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) meant that all East Germans automatically became citizens of the FRG on 3 October 1990. The grounds for the first reason became increasingly difficult to justify, as the collapse of communism allowed and encouraged vast numbers of residents from Eastern Europe to claim their German lineage, despite their ever more remote ancestry