German conservatives backtrack on language comments

German conservative party CSU on Monday watered down remarks made over the weekend that foreigners should speak German at home.

The Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a member of the ruling coalition, demanded that migrants settling in Germany on a permanent basis should speak German at home.

The CSU said in draft proposal over the weekend: "People who want to remain here on a permanent basis should be obliged to speak German in public and within the family."

Those words caused an uproar in Germany and a number of party members have distanced themselves from the original proposal, calling for it to be re-worded. The party's deputy head Peter Gauweiler said ahead of a party meeting on Monday in Munich that people should be able to speak however they want at home.

Merkel distances herself

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also distanced herself from the proposal on Monday, but underlined the advantage of growing up bilingual:

"Good knowledge of German is a part of integration," the chancellor said in Cologne. "However it's also no failing when children grow up bilingual, for example, and have to learn one less foreign language. On the whole, I regard that as an advantage."

She also said she plans to boost access to training for young people from immigrant families.

"We have to make that better," Merkel told a government integration summit in Berlin, saying that "the pace (of entry) could be increased."

Merkel acknowledged that many job applications failed simply because the applicant had a foreign name. She called representatives from Germany's 16 states, business, trade unions and migrant organizations to the Chancellor's office to discuss steps to overcome the problems for migrants entering training.

Uproar in Germany

German politicians reacted to the CSU's demands in different ways. Yasmin Fahimi, general secretary of the Social Democrats told the German press agency, DPA that the CSU had "arrived in Absurdistan. It would be hilarious if it weren't so dangerous."

Merkel's own party members, the Christian Democrats, were also inclined to call their southern allies backward. The CDU's general secretary Peter Tauber tweeted: "It's not politicians' business if I speak Latin, Klingon or Hessian at home."

The Bavarian dialect was an obvious target for a heated debate in social media websites. Newspaper Die Zeit's online version posted a picture of a German dictionary, asking the question, "Is Bavarian also German?"

The conservatives received a huge backlash across social media:

Other people made jokes: "The baby still doesn't speak German. As punishment, I am singing German Christmas songs to him. Baby is going number-two. Thinking of deporting him."

And one tweet pokes fun at "Weißwurst," a Bavarian sausage, saying that the German state had banned all chocolate except from chocolate with Weißwurst flavor:

Gastarbeiter no more

Germany is home to many immigrants, mostly of Turkish descent, dating all the way back to the country's efforts to boost the economy in the 1970s and 80s by bringing in more workers as so-called "Gastarbeiter," or guest workers. Contrary to the plan, many of them stayed and made a life for themselves. And in light of ongoing conflicts around the world, Germany is a top destination for refugees - currently accepting the highest number of asylum seekers in Europe.

Germany is home to about three million people of Turkish descent alone, and one organisation representing that population reacted angrily to the CSU's idea that foreigners should speak German at home.

"With this hostile, unconstitutional, absurd proposal, the CSU may possibly impress voters of the AfD (anti-euro party) and from far-right parties, but the CSU is doing democracy a disservice," the Turkish Community in Germany said.

sb/bw (AFP, dpa)