Fear of uncontrolled migration continues to weigh heavily on the German public debate. But behind today’s political tone, a simple historical fact is often left in the shadows: for decades and centuries, it was Germans themselves who were leaving in large numbers in search of survival, work, and a better life.
When Germans were the ones leaving
The history of German migration began long before today’s asylum crises. In the 18th century and then in the 19th century, thousands and later millions of Germans set out for America, driven by poverty, lack of prospects, poor harvests, and growing pressure on the labor market.
In the harsh debates of the time, prejudice against the newcomers was not absent. Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, described Germans in contemptuous terms, portraying them as people who would not accept the language and customs of the host country. That makes the historical irony of today’s integration debate even clearer.
According to historian and migration scholar Jochen Oltmer, migration is not a modern exception, but a constant feature of human history. From this perspective, today’s movements are not an anomaly, but a continuation of a reality far older than modern states.
Dangerous journeys, debt and exploitation
Departure had nothing romantic about it. The ship journey to America cost roughly as much as a craftsman’s annual wage, forcing many families to sell everything they had in order to finance the crossing.
Conditions on the way were brutal: overcrowded spaces below deck, poor food, contaminated water, and serious diseases such as dysentery, typhus, smallpox, or scurvy. Many never reached their destination.
Even those who arrived often ended up bound to years of forced labor to repay the debt of the journey. Families were separated, and economic dependency turned into a harsh form of exploitation. In essence, the promise of a better life often passed through a system that today would be viewed with far greater suspicion.
From a continent of emigration to a center of immigration
In the mid-20th century, the historical balance began to reverse. Europe, including Germany, gradually shifted from being an exporter of population to a major destination for newcomers.
In West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, the economic boom created strong demand for labor. Starting in 1956, the so-called “guest worker trains” arrived at major stations, carrying Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, Yugoslavs, and Turks recruited for the labor market.
By the time recruitment was halted in 1973, around 14 million people had come to West Germany as guest workers, while around three million stayed permanently. Despite this, for many years the German state and society maintained the political fiction that the country was not really a country of immigration.
Integration demanded, but not always enabled
According to data from the Federal Statistical Office, in 2025 more than 30 percent of the population in Germany had a migration background. This shows not only the scale of the phenomenon, but also the gap between demographic reality and the way this issue has been treated politically for decades.
According to Oltmer, for a long time the prevailing idea was that newcomers did not truly belong to German society, because one day they would leave. That premise, he says, produced a lack of investment in integration and a limited acceptance that many people have been forced to earn at high personal cost.
Even today, according to this assessment, many people have no clear path to regularize their status and obtain a stable residence permit, even though in practice it is known that they will remain. This makes the debate over integration not only cultural, but also institutional.
Asylum accounts for little, but the debate takes up much
Migration and asylum remain politically charged issues in Germany. But according to Oltmer, asylum accounts for only about 10 percent of migration to the country, while the larger share is linked to other reasons and not necessarily to war or persecution.
This relationship between the figures and the public noise raises a serious question about how the debate is constructed. When the focus shifts almost entirely to the most conflict-ridden cases, a distorted picture is created that feeds fear and hasty policies.
Against this backdrop, the German case shows that history, economics, and the politics of reception directly shape how a society sees the migrant: as a burden, as a labor necessity, or as a legitimate part of its own future.
In the end, the German contradiction remains clear: a country that has experienced the mass emigration of its own people and that today relies on immigration still has difficulty fully accepting this reality on the political and social level.
That is precisely where the debate becomes most sensitive: not in the next slogan about borders or integration, but in the question of what kind of society Germany aims to build and whom it is prepared to accept as part of it.