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Comment by jansan | Hacker News Reader

IMO there is still a lot of untapped potential in the south eastern German states Saxonia (the state where Dresden is located) and Thuringia. Both states historically had gread, very advanced industries and craftsmanship, which suffered a lot during socialist times. There are still great people, but it obviously takes a long time to catch up once the whole industry lost its competitiveness due to a failed political system.

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I'm sad for all the hate this place gets in the sibling posts.

I live here and its not that bad, but i also know that i can't just grab you from the internet and show you around the place and its non-hateful sides.

I don't know if you're POC or not, but for some of us, this is a personal safety issue and also, it just kind of sucks to feel under siege in society all the time.

To be sure, I have lived in places in the rural U.S., and not all of them are bad. There are places where the folks seem to vote for a hateful candidate, but when you meet them, it's actually not what it chalked up to be. And then there are other places. It's not as simple as rural vs. urban either. I would rather live in parts of rural California than in most East Coast cities.

When I'm in a place full of a hateful side, I will know it, and I will generally avoid returning except on occasion. Also, at some point in your life you will get older. You own't want to deal with that anymore. Anyone thinking otherwise is kidding themselves. It'll be fun and games until you're the elderly Asian person whose skull has been bashed in. When you're young and feeling indestructible, cool. One day that will end. Maybe it will be the passing of a relative, or welcoming someone to the family. The day will come when your priorities change.

In all, it's not our jobs to spend our lives being the canary in the coal mine. There's this idea of individualism in the West, yes? We need to go where we can grow, or at the least be safe to try.

>It'll be fun and games until you're the elderly Asian person whose skull has been bashed in.

German and European descendants have essentially nothing to do with this phenomenon. In fact, white elders were the primary targets of brutal rapes, assaults, murders, and home invasions by the same POC criminal groups before the US had a large Asian population. Such violence on the streets and in schools was the primary cause for white flight to the suburbs are rural areas. It was a series of decisions made from the exact perspective you’re describing. This view is generally not taught in US schools but is extensively documented in primary sources, such as “Left Behind in Rosedale:”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2056992.Left_Behind_In_R...

And “Common Ground,” a book about the result of forced busing imposed on communities at literal gunpoint:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Ground_(Lukas_book)

European descendants remain victims in ~90% of interracial crime between these two groups today. Similar number for Asians, similar lack of media attention paid. Bet you never heard of the gang assault and murder of Ee Lee:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ee_Lee

White flight was unadulterated racism. It wasn’t because the black family that moved down the street started being violent. It’s because whites did not want to live on the same street as them.

Of course caucasians would be a victim of ~90% of interracial crime, those are the general population demographics in most places that are not urban in the US.

The primary historical sources contradict your opinion. Racism was a part of it, certainly. The other part and the reason for much of the racism was excessive violence and crime. Here’s another book from the era which documents this, note the top review:

https://www.amazon.com/school-ten-year-destruction-Franklin-...

>Of course caucasians would be a victim of ~90% of interracial crime, those are the general population demographics in most places that are not urban in the US.

Do you understand that this number includes urban areas?

How are you qualifying “primary historical sources”? Nothing in the links you posted indicate these to be official primary historical sources other than you claiming them to be so.

> Of course caucasians would be a victim of ~90% of interracial crime, those are the general population demographics in most places that are not urban in the US.

What does it have to do with anything?

Let's simplify and assume interracial crimes only include a white person and a black person (e.g. we're excluding other races to simplify the model). If both races had equal propensity for crimes, the whites (as well as the blacks) would victims of 50% of interracial crimes.

Given that whites they were victims of 90% of interracial crimes, it must mean that the other races were the perpetrators of 90% of interracial crimes. The fact that whites are the most populous race does not change anything there.

>> It'll be fun and games until you're the elderly Asian person whose skull has been bashed in.

> German and European descendants have essentially nothing to do with this phenomenon.

You might want to read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostock-Lichtenhagen_riots

The parent comment was highlighting anti-Asian hate attacks in the US. These attacks are overwhelmingly committed by Afro-American men. If you'd rather talk about ethnically-motivated mob attacks in Germany, there's no need to look as far as 30 years back:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%9316_New_Year%27s_E...

Regarding your link:

>The shelter was originally intended to house 300 refugees a month, but by summer 1992 it was averaging 11,500 refugees per month. Primarily Roma from Romania

I don't remember any war in 1992 in Romania. The social problems involving Roma people in Europe are well-documented, on the other hand.

>I don't remember any war in 1992 in Romania.

Is war the only thing that puts people's lives in danger?

There was no declaration of war but neither was for Russia's invation of Ukraine.

If you would have looked it up, you would have found out it was a civil war.

There was a revolution in 1989 which toppled the communism regime which was followed by a long period of turmoil of riots and violent uprisings till the mid '90 (the mineriade were the most infamous) which saw extreme poverty, crime and people being beaten in the streets.

A lot of it was because the people who came to power after the revolution were the same cronies who ruled during comunism, typically members of the communist party and the secret police.

Going from comunism to capitalism isn't some binary switch you can toggle on/off without issues, even though you might not think of it because there was no declaration of war.

Edit: if you downvoted, would you mind explaining? Or do you not believe in history?

Scott Cummings uses terms like "black invasion" to describe demographic changes in the neighborhood. It's difficult to separate his obvious biases from his work, leaving a slanted product unfit as an accurate record. Lukas is a much more reliable narrator, however, and Common Ground is an excellent work.

Your statistics are uninteresting; the largest demographic is indeed the primary recipient of inter-demographic action from the second-largest demographic. This is to be expected in any interaction across any demographic boundary. Trying to use to it to advance some agenda is disingenuous, especially since 80% of all white people murdered are murdered by white people -- in other words, you're dealing with marginalia here.

The claim about the "lack of media attention" for black-on-asian violence is similarly absurd, since there is plentiful media coverage of the problem as a whole and your provided example in specific, as demonstrated in the sources cited by your Wikipedia link.

> Scott Cummings uses terms like "black invasion" to describe demographic changes in the neighborhood.

So what? That’s how the elderly people getting robbed, raped and murdered saw it. Does their suffering count for nothing?

Elder whites in Rosedale were specifically targeted for violence. The verbatim confessions of the perpetrators admit this. The crime data record this. The same pattern now repeats with elderly Asians. Whatever you think of the author, a committed liberal whose distaste for the racist speech of some interview subjects is palpable, the facts stand on their own.

If you want to talk statistics, the racial disparities in both inter- and intra-race violence remain even at comparable income levels. They are especially pronounced between blacks and Asians. It’s not necessary to speculate as to reasons in order to note that it’s true. Without acknowledging something’s happening, it cannot be addressed and is impossible to fix.

The lack of attention to anti-Asian violence relates to the identities of the perpetrators, as you know. These stories also fall out of the news much quicker than, for instance, the killing of Ahmaud Arbery.

If you take a random directed graph and separate the nodes in two sets A and B you would expect* the arrow from A to B to be about the same as those from B to A regardless of the relative size.

* on average on all partitions with |A| \le |B|

Statistically, Germany is safer than the US. By a significant margin in like, all kinds of violence.

This is true.

Now if we were to pick this apart, I will explain to you why I still would have a hard time trusting any statistics, given the things others have said (not just folks commenting on these threads).

I grew up in the NYC of the 80's. Then, as now, most of the violent crime against Asians was committed by black folks, as another responder has pointed out (albeit in a way that I find unhelpful). Indeed, until you move up in social class, you will be targeted, as an Asian person, by disadvantaged people from lower social classes (no, they won't just be black, I can say that from personal experience).

The emphasis here is on social class. Economic class on its own is not quite good enough. (To go off in a tangent, you have to move up in economic class, and leverage that to move up in social class, which tends to put you in friction with already-established social elites, but like I said, that's another matter, and moving up in social class still makes you relatively safe physically.)

Anyway, there has been quite a discrepancy between attacks on Asians in 2020s west coast cities versus NYC. I know this because I still have older relatives on the ground in NYC. There has also been historically much greater discrimination in NYC than west coast cities, e.g. in SF. This is what happens to Asians in general in the U.S., because of the role we'd been slotted as a model minority.

So, I don't have to be directly, physically attacked by the majority in order to feel unsafe.

What leads to the lack of safety I've experienced is something like the bamboo ceiling, and for me to be part of an economically-advantaged but politically-disadvantaged group, by construction. I would expect to be different, in Germany (and in particular, the AfD parts of East Germany), just as much in the U.S. When I read the history books, I understand that such a situation tends to lead to inevitabilities I'd rather not get into here, when e.g. the economy goes bad – and this would not just be about Germany. It may not be violent today, but there's no telling about tomorrow.

With that all said, I will concede to you that Germany would still be safer than the U.S., because all things being equal, if you're stuck in the same social situation but one place is more violent than the other, then you will probably survive in the less-violent place for longer.

But it's still not encouraging to compare Germany to the U.S. For me, that's like considering jumping from one pot of hot water into another. This isn't just a debate about statistics. The first and second generations, being recently emigrated, will often frame such things in terms of: should I stay here, or should I move there, when these comparisons are made. Because ultimately, you can talk about statistics and the theory of how it all is, but when you're a canary in the coal mine, "should I move there" is where the buck stops. With that question you're not just debating anymore. You're taking your life in your own hands.

To that end, you will ask questions about being different, and being disempowered socially. If they don't get you in this generation, the internalized prejudices will get your kids in the next. Moving to a different place with a totally different culture, where there's a lot fewer people who look like me, and where a party like the AfD has the hold that it does, does not justify itself. If I were my parents, emigrating to the West, and doing it all over again in today's context, Berlin might be an alternative – not Leipzig or Dresden, but that is kind of a moot point for those of us already Westernized in the U.S.

> Because ultimately, you can talk about statistics and the theory of how it all is, but when you're a canary in the coal mine, "should I move there" is where the buck stops.

Why did this end up in favor of the US instead of Germany in your head? I would consider things like Kenosha, Charlottesville, Minneapolis and the Capital Riots as a sign to not move there.

On the other hand, there's also a deep suspicion towards foreigners and some of the most right-wing sentiments you will find anywhere in Germany. I literally witnessed some Indian-American colleagues of mine being physically assaulted because they had non-white skin color and were walking down the street. This in combination with the already existing labor shortages severely limit the region's potential.

Source: I lived and worked in Dresden for a decade.

I double on this. Colleague from Philippines was spited on in Neustadt during normal walk in the evening. I had a car with foreign plates for a while and it was scratched on both sides. Coincidence? It was first and last time my car was intentionally scratched.

It's quite sad, but it is what it is. If you're not white you shouldn't stay there for long. Particularly not at night or whenever there's a football match. It's gotta be hard for such a place to compete with more cosmopolitan regions, particularly with Germany's demographics. If Dresden can't attract immigrants then its semiconductor industry will have to move elsewhere as ethnic Germans retire.

EDIT: I don't mean to say you can't live there. It's not a war zone. But it's a rough place.

This is big problem. Without (more) PoC living in this area, nothing improves.

But would I recommend a PoC friend to live in Dresden? Not really, I would rather advise him to look for a job in Berlin or Frankfurt.

> Without (more) PoC living in this area, nothing improves.

That's an interesting take. Why?

It is repeated all over the place but its not true. Talent and intellectual diversity doesn't come from skin color. "Region X needs more people of skin color Y" is always nonsense.

I don't know whether their take is the generic "diversity is always good" nonsense or whether they specifically referred to PoC as cheap immigrant labor that will help the economy and make locals richer (as that in practice is their role in Germany and most other rich countries).

Germany is very different from most western countries (Canada, Australia, US, UK, etc) in that most immigration there is not highly skilled professionals.

It is harder to learn how to better integrate minorities if all the minorities have left.

> in Berlin or Frankfurt.

My half Moroccan friend was spit on by some middle eastern looking guy because he was drinking a beer in public, and that was in Berlin

Berlin isn't inclusive, it's based on communitarianism, every little (or not so little) community live in group and at the few points they interact with each other you get the same issues as you get everywhere else.

It looks good on the surface but when you live here you start to see it for what it really is.

I wonder how much the WW2 allied atrocities (firebombing of civilians in Dresden) factors into this.

I think the bombings have nothing to do with this. Hamburg was completely bombed to the ground, too, and there are not hard feelings left towards British or Americans. The reasons are found in the hard awakening after 40 years of socialism and the time during and after reunification.

The firebombing of Dresden specifically has been instrumentallized by far right wing groups to put the German population in a victim role.

It nevertheless has little to nothing to do with the attitudes against foreigners.

The rubble of the bombed downtown found a spot between the intact Wehrmacht barracks (today Stauffenbergallee) and intact SS headquarters in the Hellerhof. How does this come across?

Dresden xenophobes do like to make a point out of this, as if it would excuse anything. But other cities were hit hard as well and there even the most right wing prefer to avoid bringing it up. It does factor, but not causally in the way you seem to suggest.

> This in combination with the already existing labor shortages severely limit the region's potential.

The potential comes not from the region, but the people living there.

The AfD support there is quite worrying.

AfD is not relevant anymore. They are openly pushing Russian economic interests now (Nord Stream 2, lifting sanctions) and so became a used asset.

AfD is gaining support in Germany: https://pollytix.de/wahltrend/

And to highlight, those are the national numbers (12% as of time of writing).

The current numbers for Saxony are at 28% [0].

[0] https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/landtage/sachsen.htm

The problem with Eastern Germany and Dresden in particular is that there is a solid 20-25% voter block for outright fascists, and the nominal "conservatives" and "free-market liberals" often enough aren't better at all - way over half the population is anything from hardcore Conservative to "would love to see politicians on gallows"-Nazi. On top of that Dresden has the only PEGIDA (bunch of Nazis that started protesting against refugees in 2014/15) group that is still running bi-weekly (the rest of 'em stopped over the years, with Munich's only collapsing due to Covid), which was already seen as a bad economic warn sign in 2016 [0], and the Eastern German states have the lowest vaccination rates by far.

Eastern Germany has a lot of very nice places, but hell no I'd never ever move there, especially not if you're a foreigner. The risk of everyday violence against anything the far-right percieves as "immigrant" is just too high.

[0] https://www.br.de/nachricht/pegida-schadet-dresden-100.html

Yep. I almost laughed when I read this sentence:

> It is definitely not a punishment to live, work or study here.

It might indeed be not a punishment if you're white, but you might be embarrassed about the political beliefs of your neighbors.

Believe me, even as a white person I would consider living in Dresden a nightmare.

I have been living in East Germany for the last 15 years. My wife is Bulgarian (is that "foreign" enough for you?) and she never had any issues with anybody being anti-immigrant or racist towards her.

She's probably looking pretty normal/like a German, no problems then.

Nazis only care about skin color. You could be from Mars - as long as you are white, all is ok.

My history books tell a different story.

Hilarious comment. Not sure if it’s a joke.

The problem with this sentiment lies in West germany where West germans always looked down on East germans. They were slightly better than eastern europeans so to say. Well at least they spoke german right?

West germany sucked dry East germany of their young and ambitious and used them for cheap labor. Well it was not really that unexpected.

You cant expect people to develop in all aspects as they have vastly different experiences and probably had different upbringing than you.

Btw east germans are way less racist and xenophobic towards their fellow Europeans from East Europe compared to West Germans.

Anecdotal evidence but i have seen it too many times to dismiss it.

Calling the AfD voter block "outright facists" is not helpful. Yeah, there is sadly plenty of people in there deserving of that description. And yeah, the danger the AfD poses should not be downplayed, nor should the danger of PEGIDA be downplayed.

But study after study, survey after survey has shown that most of the voter block of the AfD are not "outright fascists" but people disillusioned by the establishment parties who then fall prey to the the less extremist public messaging the AfD likes to do. These people aren't fascists', they aren't nazis, and constantly calling them names will certainly not help, but drive them even more towards the AfD.

So please, I implore you to tone down your hyperbole. Where this kind of "basket of deplorables" rhetoric eventually leads we can all watch with horror.

>but people disillusioned by the establishment parties who then fall prey to the the less extremist public messaging the AfD

In particular in German discourse on fascism there's always been the observation that this is precisely its most dangerous form, a popular term used to be Extremismus der Mitte (literally, extremism of the middle).

In its most serious form fascism is an extremism of the middle-class, the small merchants, the bureaucracy, the policeman, the lawyer, the doctor and so forth. The meathead with the swastika tattoo on his arm looks scary but nobody takes him seriously. One of the strongest backbones of the NSDAP, which people tend to forget, were women.(https://scroll.in/article/959951/why-i-became-a-nazi-essays-...)

With people like Björn Höcke at the helm, sorry it's no longer possible to call the AfD anything else than a fascist party (if it has ever been the last years).

I agree that a lot of the voters have fallen prey to the populist hate mongering, but still: anyone who votes for the AfD in its current state, designated as a politically extremist party by the authorities to a degree that state servants ("Beamte") have to actually fear consequences for their membership [0], can be called at least a supporter of a fascist party.

[0] https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000133952136/afd-alsverdac...

Even as a native German I find Saxony and Thuringia two of the most unattractive places in Germany. I would never ever consider to relocate - even if I would find great job opportunities (which don't really exists apart from a few exceptions). Why: Dresden, Rostock, Halle etc. are the most racist, culturally and intellectually backwards places in all of Germany. We call the area around Dresden "the valley of the clueless" for a reason.

Its "the valley of the clueless" because west TV could not be received for geographical reasons.

The 1992 Rostock attacks on the Vietnamese and Roma minorities - what an insane thing to happen. I’ve come to the conclusion that humanity doesn’t learn from its past.

That's just tip of the iceberg. There were 61 arsons targeted at immigrants in the past 6 years.

You are overgeneralizing. The "valley of the clueless" referred to places like Dresden and Greifswald that were not able to receive broadcasts from West Germany and hence were somewhat more closed communities (also for other reasons). On the other hand there are places like Leipzig that didn't have this problem and as a historical center of commerce and trade always received guests from all over the world, even during GDR times.

Saxony and Thuringia are not one homogeneous place, sentiments and opinions differ and so does the political situation.

I live in Dresden and I agree that there is are groups with pretty bad, conservative, racist or extreme views. But there are also other groups and I would say the 'other' groups are definitely the (largely silent) majority. Similar patterns exist also elsewhere: What are the 'Querdenker' (or Pegigda) in Dresden are the 'Gelbwesten' in France, the Brexit-voters in UK, the 'Unite the Right' In Virginia, Charlottesville, etc.

Saying that you would never move to Saxony or Thuringia is a generalization and it doesn't help anyone.

Oh, it definitely helps those who don't know better. As a person of color, YOU SHOULD NOT MOVE THERE.

Sorry, but this is absolutely not true. As a person of color, you may experience the same difficulties all over Germany (or, Europe or in the US, by the way), not just in Dresden. I am not saying that this is good or acceptable or anything, just that Dresden does not stand out in any way in this regard - only perhaps from an outsiders perspective.

Well, I know that my little sister and brother have been hunted in the streets of some town in (former) East Germany while visiting. I don't think it was Dresden, but close. This has NEVER happened to them while living in (former) West Germany.

Sometimes being an outsider helps to see things more clearly than when you are an insider, Helmut.

Oh, I've been born close to Leipzig, by the way.

I have worked in California, Virginia, and Germany, and I've seen racist contexts in all these locations. East vs West Germany: Yes, perhaps the east is somewhat more opposed to outsiders, but only in the country side - cities like Dresden, Berlin, Leipzig are similarly diverse as are West German cities. And if you go to a rural area in Bavaria, you'll find (former) Pegida as well. It is just not as simple as the generalizations made by you and others.

In the end, when it comes down to a decision, you need something simple: Yes or No. Yes, I move there, or No, I don't move there. As a person of color, and if you have a choice, the answer is NO (I also wouldn't recommend rural Bavaria, but Munich is fine).

> We call the area around Dresden "the valley of the clueless" for a reason.

Who are "we"? It was a term coined in the GDR and you are for sure not from there.

I'm not a white German, and I don't live there, but I love Dresden. To walk through the city center, or walk around the Elbe River is a fantastic experience. One of the most beautiful Capitals in Germany (and one of the safest too!)

The idiots surely exist, but have you actually been there for some time?

If so, you might find, reality is quite big and divers. Dresden Neustadt is quite different from Dresden Prohlis. And Leipzig a whole other story.

And Rostock is no part of Thuringa nor Saxony btw.

Actually out of the three cities mentioned, only one (Dresden) is in Thuringia or Saxony, none is in Thuringia. ;)

Ah yes, but Halle is at least very close to Thuringa, while Rostock is quite far away..

We still have a great and advanced industry and craftsmanship.

> which suffered a lot during socialist times

The other way around, they were doing great (Robotron, Wismut, Pentacon) until the reunification. Socialism somehow kept them alive.

No. Before WW2 "Mitteldeutschland" was an big and serious industrial center.

AFAIK it has always been relatively weak economically - consider that heavy industry used to be a big deal economically, and heavy industry was in the West. But the region did have some high tech industries such as aircraft, optical, electronics. Semiconductors are in that line of tradition.

There also was automotive industry. Audi is originally from Zwickau. There was a BMW factory in Eisenach. Jena was a stronghold for optics and glass industry (luckily still is to a certain degree).

They were doing great, YES, but that means if there were no Russian influence, they would have industry on par with Taiwan, now.

I thought they were "kept alive" because they weren't competing with Western devices; once the wall fell it was pretty clear how far behind they were, and they were quickly bought/dismantled as they weren't competitive.

I couldn't find any good details/stories about them though, or the industry during that time. I wonder if someone will chime in with a good source, it sounds like an interesting time to read about.

You may look up the already mentioned Robotron, or Messelektronik. Further Zentrallaboratorium für Rundfunk- und Fernsehempfangstechnik (ZRF). The history of Manfred von Ardenne is interesting as well (first electronic television 1931, but also helping sowjet a-bomb).

There are many interesting stories just floating under the surface, but the gist is that the GDR industry was actually quite competitive for singular projects right after WW2, but then fell behind in the 60's and 70's (but again with very few exceptions where the GDR remained somewhat competitive, like mechanical engineering).

For instance the first German jet airliner was being developed (but eventually cancelled) in Dresden by former Junkers engineers returning from Soviet 'captivity' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baade_152) - for background see the Soviet version of 'Operation Paperclip': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim

Or the Trabant actually being a very innovative car when it first appeared: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant

Later on it became hard to separate facts from propaganda. Apparently the MKF-6 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKF-6_(multispectral_camera)) was innovative, but according to GDR propaganda it was of course superior to anything else in the world ;)

The East German chip manufacturing industry also was actually quite impressive for its time, even though it was 5..10 years behind the state of the art, but at least there was a domestic chip manufacturing industry.

Wow, this the most incorrect statement I have read all week.

I am from this area, and Saxony before the GDR was of the most prosperous regions of Germany. If you are not convinced by the pomposity the former kingdom amassed in treasures and architecture, you can check the historical GDP per capita figures of the region [1].

Saxony historically was the number one state in terms of economic power behind the city states.

But the economic and political horrors that the socialist dictatorship brought, combined with the plundering done by Russia, completely turned this upside down. It is quite amazing how a few decades of bad leadership can bring a region to its knees.

It is true, however, that a lot of potential is still left in Saxony, and by many measures (like quality of schooling) it is still one of Germany's best.

[1] Page 11 on https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282329316_Human_Cap...

Tone. If being from this area makes you more informed, then im more informed than you.

Most of the Saxon 'industrial base' either moved to Bavaria after WW2 or was looted by the Russians. The Wismut was a 'one hit wonder': after the Uranium deposits were depleted (which didn't take long) it tapered off like everything else in East Germany. The investment in microelectronics in the 70's might have been the only thing that went somewhat right and had a lasting effect even after the GDR imploded.

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