Elaine Meinel Supkis
As America debates immigration policies and as refugees from Katrina struggle to find a toehold in their own country, Germany, which as a below replacement birth rate and general emigration of native speaking Germans, struggles with how to test new citizens, a test that will insure only really serious immigrants want to stay.
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
Published: March 29, 2006
BERLIN, March 28 — What's the capital of Germany? Well, pretty much everybody knows that one. It's Berlin, of course.At a protest last month in Stuttgart: "We belong here! Even without an attitude test!"
But how about these questions: "Which convention gathered at St. Paul's Church in Frankfurt in 1848?" "Name three mountains in Germany." "Which German physicist revolutionized medical diagnosis in 1895?"If you are a foreigner living in Germany and do not know that the National Assembly was the convention that gathered in 1848, or that the 1895 scientist was Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, you might not be able to become a German citizen — not, at least, if a new citizenship test for foreigners is adopted by the national government.
I have a strong suggestion! Every country should test all the citizens on these things! In America, a very simple test: know the Amendments to the Constitution. Half of the Bush adminstration will flunk that one. Then we can deport them. All dual citizens can be forced to swear fealty to only one country, too. This willl flush out the army of such people working within our government starting with the head of our national security, Chertoff.
I am all for trying to explain Hegalian logic or the roots of the communist party in German philosophical societies of the mid-19th Century! Or how about quoting Mittelhochdeutsch poetry? Or explaining the history of German literature and how capitalizing a host of nouns and shoving all sort of nouns and verbs and adjectives into superlongstringwordsthatrunonandonandonendlesslywithout asinglebreak?
Heh. It was deliberate, you know! Medieval German was a simple language and the word length was the same as Medieval English or French, even! All the writers, during the Reformation and the invention of the printing press, made languages incredibly more complex and difficult and fused Latin and Greek grammar and words into native tongues which gave writers great delight, compare a poem by Dryden to the one about Beowulf!
Imagine an immigrant in England reciting either poet as a test! Heh. Actually, they should stick to poetry and make all citizens as well as immigrants recite important poems. Well, in America, sing the National Anthem and if you can't hit the highest note and sustain it for at least one beat, you get deported!
This could be the all-purpose test in Germany, too, only it would be "Deutschland Über Alles," and you have to do it while drinking a dark beer from a München-sized Oktober Bierfest mug. Urp. Hey, I can pass that test, too!
I might squeeze past the French test which is to sneer while warbling their national anthem. "Allez (sneer)..."
OK, England. No singing. You have to eat haggis. Period. No excuses. Dig in, alien invaders.
Except if you are Irish. Then you fight to be let out.
Haggis?, the Scots didn't arrive into britain much earlier than the Angles, perhaps, honey wine, not beer.
Posted by: big al | March 31, 2006 at 09:26 AM
The northern tribes were so wild that when the ROMANS invaded, all they could do was build Hadrian's wall and throw insults at them.
Painted with woad and drinking who knows what! They were ferocious. And they wore kilts, too.
Posted by: Elaine Meinel Supkis | March 31, 2006 at 09:27 AM