Timelines

Written on June 17, 1981, by Theodor Schmidt-Kaler, professor of astronomy at the University of Bochum, and Helmut Schröcke, professor of mineralogy at the University of Munich, the manifesto was signed by fifteen other professors, including the then CDU Federal Minister Theodor Oberländer. There are two versions: the first was published in right-wing extremist magazines in 1981 and distributed as a leaflet. Due to fierce criticism and comparisons to Nazi ideology, a revised version followed in January 1982. The main goal of the manifesto is to preserve the “German people,” which is seen as endangered by the recruitment agreements of the early 1960s. The influx of migrant workers is interpreted as a threat to the “preservation of the German people and its spiritual identity based on our Christian-Western heritage.” A distinction is made between immigrants who are considered “problematic” and those who are less problematic. This is reminiscent of current debates about wanted and unwanted immigrants, as propagated by Thilo Sarrazin's theses, for example. This shows that the group of unwanted immigrants varies depending on the political context and social mood. The ideas of the Heidelberg Manifesto are not new and are reminiscent of the “anti-Semitic petition” of 1880, which was written by Bernhard Förster and Max Liebermann during the imperial era. At that time, they demanded the exclusion of Jews from government offices and the abolition of their constitutional equality. The Heidelberg Manifesto thus reflected racist tendencies and had parallels to historical and current discourses on migration policy and cultural identity.