ABSTRACT
In October 2000 a German politician, Friedrich Merz, the leader of the parliamentary faction of the Christian-Democratic party CDU, launched a debate on the need for immigrants to integrate into the Leitkultur, a term which has been translated variously as ‘guiding’ or ‘defining’ culture. In the controversy that followed, the president of the Jewish community in Germany asked whether the outbreaks of racist violence in the Eastern provinces should be seen as part of this defining culture that immigrants would have to accept. In its party manifesto on immigration policy of 6 November 2000 the CDU replaced the original formula ‘a German defining culture’ with an apparently less nationalistic one: ‘a defining culture in Germany’ (CDU, 2000).2
