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[embitteredhistorian]

Well, I'm saying that it hasn't, thus I think the prohibition on holocaust denial there is appropriate.

I don't think I quite follow. Are you saying that Germans should not have the right to try and whitewash the Nazi regime, hence the ban on holocaust denial is right and proper? Are you saying that, empirically, there is no freedom of expression in Germany, period? Or is your point something else entirely?

The former: they shouldn't have the right to whitewash, thus it is right for them to suffer the indignity of having a restriction on speech that other democratic countries don't have. 

The only problems with this statement are:

1. This restriction of speech exists in the UK and many other EU countries.
2. Due to Shenghen treaty, this Germany law reaches beyond Germany's borders. In other words, you forgot Poland.

[ferriswheel]

The former: they shouldn't have the right to whitewash, thus it is right for them to suffer the indignity of having a restriction on speech that other democratic countries don't have.

As embitteredhistorian points out, the "indignity" of these restrictions exists in other countries as well. My take is, no-one should have a right to whitewash National Socialism, regardless of their nationality. To suggest that special restrictions must be placed on Germans qua Germans is, to put it mildly, debatable. I'll remind folks of the obvious, which is that (West) Germany has been a liberal democracy for sixty years. From whom, exactly, are Germans supposed to "earn back" their right to freedom of speech? And what criteria, exactly, would be used by this nebulous someone to assess whether Germans are civilized enough to be entrusted with the awesome responsibility of free speech?

When the Germans get past citizenship being based on race and blood, and immigration considered a legal possibility, then they will be ready for people to assume they've adopted the same kinds of values as the rest of us.

I agree with the substance of your critique, but racism and xenophobia are hardly limited to Germany, so I'd have to wonder who "the rest of us" is.

[qrypt]

Well, I'm saying that it hasn't, thus I think the prohibition on holocaust denial there is appropriate.

I don't think I quite follow. Are you saying that Germans should not have the right to try and whitewash the Nazi regime, hence the ban on holocaust denial is right and proper? Are you saying that, empirically, there is no freedom of expression in Germany, period? Or is your point something else entirely?

The former: they shouldn't have the right to whitewash, thus it is right for them to suffer the indignity of having a restriction on speech that other democratic countries don't have. 

I agree. When the Germans get past citizenship being based on race and blood, and immigration considered a legal possibility, then they will be ready for people to assume they've adopted the same kinds of values as the rest of us.

The mainstream claims of Christian Democracy in particular, not only the lunatic right, is living proof that they haven't. And the Social Democrats aren't much better.

In an attempt at fairness: it's a bit better in Germany than it used to be, and some other countries are going in the wrong direction.  And even among vaguely democratic countries, Israel counts as quite a bit worse on this score. 

As for other countries and speech restrictions -- as far as I'm concerned, Britain has done an astonishingly poor job of handling this issue.  But there are much bigger issues around freedom of speech in the UK -- mostly having to do with the way libel law works here. 

So on this score at least, I'm more critical of Britain than of Germany. 

[call_me_al]

Not to belittle the OP's plight in the least -- but the fact that she happens to be in Germany is completely incidential, imho. What we have here is a case of bureaucracy, more specifically social services, even more specifically child protection services. They have an impossible job to do, and yes, of course there are incompetent individuals involved, but the system itself is BOUND TO FAIL. The "over-zealousness" of German Jugendamter that the OP complained about looks less damnable when seen next to the evident failure of British child protection authorities to prevent the abuse (and deaths) of children like Victoria Climbié and "Baby P".

Interestingly, from the perspective of the people working within this system, the German authorities' reluctance to take children out of their abusive families is a source of extreme frustration. A German friend of mine is a child guidance officer who also offers child therapy. She is a circumspect, calm woman; and yet the greatest crises of her working life have been cases in which she needed the support from her superiors to go ahead with the exposure of child abuse, and they would stall and stall. - No kindergarden, no nursery, no child guidance office wants to acquire a reputation for baby-snatching. It is damaging to business. In this, Germany is no difference from other countries.

[normative_]

If the German case is typical, then there should be similar complaints and findings before the European Court of Human Rights regarding other countries on this matter. Are there? Are there, as in the ECHR review, questions about a systematic approach to visitation rights? The ECHR explicitly referred to that. Of course, maybe I've missed references to other countries because I didn't look.

Of course there are cases where the abuse is overlooked, which is always deplorable, but that isn't the same as the dynamic under question. We're not talking about cases of wilfully overlooking evidence of abuse but wilfully separating parent and child based on nationality, without any other basis to assume harm to the child. It is therefore justified to ask: what is the mental view of foreigners that German child protection services cultivate that says "a non-German is a threat to this child"?  That is bad enough on its own. The extremely high hurdles that exist to foreigners who wish to acquire German nationality compound the problem.

[cora_b]

First of all, I'm sorry to hear about what happened to the OP and her child and I hope that the issue will be resolved soon.

I'm no great fan of the Jugendämter. They are all too often understaffed and underfunded and frequently either overzealous in taking children into care that are not at risk (which is what happened to the OP) or negligent in leaving genuinely endangered children with incompetent or abusive parents. But comparing today's Jugendämter to the Lebensborn organisation from the Third Reich is preposterous and it's not going to help the OP's case, because there are few things Germans, particularly those born decades after 1945, hate more than being compared to Nazis.

It's also very well possible to criticize the Jugendämter, indeed the media criticizes them quite frequently. Most of the complaints are about children not being removed from abusive homes until it is too late, such as the sad cases of Kevin, Leonie and other children killed by abusive parents. Media reports about overzealous social workers are less common, but not unheard of. A couple of months ago, I saw a TV documentary about cases where Jugendämter wrongly took children away from their families. I wish I could recall where I saw it, I think it was either ARD or NDR.

Based on the original post, I suspect that what happened here is either a case of cultural misunderstanding (e.g. older German women regularly freak out when they see children of Non-German parents supposedly inappropriately dressed for cold weather and if one of them called the Jugendamt, a nasty situation could easily develop) or more likely a language issue. Unfortunately, there is a lot of prejudice in Germany against foreign-born parents speaking their own native language with their children, because it is feared that those children will not learn to properly speak German and thus cause problems in schools. German schools also used to have a problem with bilingual children (I should know, cause I was one) and would prefer that those children did not exist. The situation regarding bilingual children is changing now and bilingualism is more accepted these days. But older teachers, social workers, etc... still see bilingualism as a problem.

There is a definite racist element to those language fears. For example, very few Jugendämter or politicians would be concerned about white Americans speaking English with their children. Ditto for Norwegians, Dutchmen, etc... Japanese expatriates are largely left alone as well. However, if the parents are from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc... the fact that they speak their own native language with their children is suddenly viewed as much more of a problem. This does not necessarily mean that all children of foreign born parents speaking little to no German are taken away, the Jugendamt would have a lot to do otherwise. But there have been cases where children were taken away from parents, because the parents were deemed not to speak sufficient German. One case that I know of involved a German-Thai couple, whose daughter was taken away because the Thai mother did not speak German very well, even though the girl was exposed to German via her father and did well in school. I assume that what happened to the OP was similar. Sometimes, social workers can be jerks.

Regarding prejudices against working mothers in West Germany, those have been eroded for thirty years at least and a lot of mothers are working, though if the child is very young (12 months or younger) the mother may still be looked at in askance, if she works full time. In recent years, there have also been a couple of legal initiatives aimed at helping working mothers by providing childcare. If anything, certain kinds of stay-at-home mothers, mainly those that are poor and on welfare or foreign born, are viewed as problems these days (see the nasty remarks by Michael Sarrazin).     

As for what to do, first of all I would contact your embassy and get a lawyer, if you don't have one already. Regarding courts, if the local family court is not sympathetic to your case (and in international custody cases they usually decide for the German parent), you could go on to the Bundessozialgericht, Bundesverfassungsgericht, European Court, whichever your lawyer deems appropriate.

Other things you could do are involving your coworkers at the university or institute where you work. The Ausländeramt wanted to deport a Nigerian lecturer at my university for a minor technicality and protests from coworkers and students made them reconsider that decision. Don't underestimate the influence letters and e-mails from outraged academics can have.

You could also contact the authority in charge of the Jugendamt in question (they are usually part of the local administration). Try the mayor of the town/city where the Jugendamt is located, the respective authority on the state level, i.e. the Ministerpräsident or the local Familien-/Sozialminister, whoever is in charge. You could even contact that Bundesfamilienministerin, though considering that the current secretary has only held the post for a couple of weeks that might not be too profitable.

Finally, I wouldn't ignore the German media. I'd start with the local newspaper and then the nationals. tageszeitung might be a good bet, if it's a racism/xenophobia issue. I would try TV as well. The various Regionalprogramme are always looking for stories to cover. You could also try the various political magazines, Frontal 21, Report, Monitor, Akte, Spiegel TV, etc... Actually, getting one of those to cover your case might have more of an impact than getting 60 Minutes to cover it. German authorities don't usually much care what 60 Minutes says, because very few people here watch it. However, they do care about Frontal 21, Monitor, Spiegel TV or whatever.   

[kukom]

Well, I heard my German colleagues saying that the research carried out at German universities is grossly underfunded, and this has to go a long way in lowering the citation index for German academics (similarly to the situation in South Korea), and thus going a ways in reducing the global rankings of their universities. Nonetheless, this in itself does not give a full picture for why German universities are ranked low. Just like the Korean universities, the Technical University of Munich ranks the highest, by THE - QS World University Rankings, at 55th place overall. In essence, only 8 places behind Korea's top ranking Seoul National University at 47th place.

Repeatedly, the same statement must be made: Prejudice toward foreign staff, in any form, whether by the government or by the respective universities themselves, inadvertently leads to lowering the rankings of the domestic universities on the international front. This is due to the nature of the methodology of the THE - QS World Univ. Rankings, with 40% based on peer review (opinion) and 10% based on employer review (opinion). In essence, any unfavorable image goes a long way in reducing the global rankings of those universities which are associated with the wrongdoing.

To lessen the chance of confusion, here are 3 research essays to expand upon the dynamics of how universities are ranked on the international front:

http://www.academicleadership.org/emprical_research/606.shtml

http://www.academicleadership.org/emprical_research/Why_South_Korean_Universities_Have_Low_International_Rankings_-_Part_II_The_Student_Side_of_the_Equation.shtml

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED506632&searchtype=keyword&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&objectId=0900019b803cd623&accno=ED506632&_nfls=false

Surely, this must not bring any comfort to the poor foreign researchers whose children have been taken away by the German government, however, karma is sure sticking its ugly head through the cracks of the doors of the German universities by shutting them out of the elite group of universities on the international front.

I do hope that this will bring some measure of comfort to their battered souls. The best of luck to them in reuniting their families.


It seems that, just as South Korea, Germany has its lessons to learn if it wants its universities to be higher ranked in a bid to keep its bright minds from studying at higher ranked American universities. This trend will surely cause serious problems in the long run, as it facilitates brain-drain (for Germany), when German nationals choose the US as a final destination for employment after graduation. Under quite different circumstances, this is what happened in the 1940's at the end of World War II when a large number of highly qualified German scientist found permanent employment in the US hence giving the US a nearly unchallenged leading edge in the technology race for quite some time. Only Russia was able to challenge the Americans, in especially the space race, however, they too had a number of German scientists and German developed technology in their arsenal.

Overall, countries must ensure that their universities are ranked higher so that this trend does not occur in their  own homelands.

Here is some additional reading from the Times Higher Education Supplement (responsible for devising THE - QS World University Rankings) to make the message a little bit clearer:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=409506

[macadamia]

.

Nevermind, just continue your well-researched discussion about the evilness of Germany.

[germanphd01]

Germany makes war on children and their parents

German TV-Magazine “Panorama”, 2010, 18th of March:
(Unauthorised translation of a German report on: www.daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2010/panoramajugendaemter110.html)

Kidnapping: Dan is allowed to go home
They came in the morning of October 2006: some employees of the “Jugendamt Berlin-Marzahn-Hellersdorf”. They waked the sleeping little Dan and took him violently away from his mother Heidi Schulz and his two sisters. The family documented the desperate cries of the seven-year-old son by video-camera. “Panorama” reported on this spectacular case of kidnapping by an official German youth authority on January 2009.
After three years of isolation, the little Dan is home again – because of the final decision of a legal court.
Experiences like those of Heidi Schulz are no longer a curiosity in Germany.
2009 the German “Jugendämter” took more than 32.000 children “in custody” from their families. Those are not necessarily families that mistreat or neglect their children.
In the case of Heidi Schulz an expert witness (in her custody case against her ex-husband) found the mother incompetent to nurture her son. She lost her legal custody right.
But also the father did not get custody of the child. Little Dan came into a children’s home.
First he was only allowed to see his mother once a month.
Heidi Schulz was fighting several years for her son.
Just shortly ago a court decided that she is no danger for her child.
The expert assessment was corrupt. Dan had the right to go home.
The “Panorama”-Team accompanied the now eleven-year-old boy, when he returned home. 


Comment:
“Panorama” reports that 90 children per day are taken away from their parents in Germany. Because of a change in law 2008 the employees of the Jugendämter do no longer need to justify their measures. The public has to pay for all measures of a Jugendamt and cannot control, if they were necessary. So Jugendämter also take the most expensive measure, what is the custody for several years in a children’s home or a foster family. No court and no ministery is allowed to prevent them from doing so. 
After the amount of custodies had risen by 14% in 2008, the German minister of family and youth, Dr. Ursula von der Leyen, called the Jugendämter to avoid custodies of children. But the Jugendämter said, the minister was not allowed to give them instructions. They did not take the ministers advice and proceed to take children away from their families in high amounts.
Germany began to spend up to 20 billion Euros p.a. from public expenses for children’s custody. In some German towns about 20% of the budget are spend for the Jugendamt and its measures. Costs had a sharp rise, because no one has the right to control the effectiveness and the necessity of the Jugendamt’s measures. So Jugendämter began to take every child that was reported or denunciated in custody.
A study of 2004 said that stationary measures, like children’s homes, are the most ineffective and most expensive form of measure. Much better are ambulant measures in the families. They have a better effect and cost less. But in Germany the Jugendämter get more money for the stationary measures. The custody is not done to help children, but it is all about money, authority and administration rights.

Several times the European Court of Human Rights told the German government to control the Jugendamt, because its mass-custodies of children is an offence against human rights.
But to stop the Jugendämter Germany should have to remove the latest change in law and give the ministery or the legal courts supervision over the Jugendämter.
Since the Second World War no one ever really controlled the German Jugendämter.
It seems that justice and allied forces forgot to rule/reorganise the Jugendamt, which established as a successor organisation of the Nazi-Lebensborn that mistreated children and destroyed families in the name of Hitler.
Actually we have a situation in Germany that reminds people of the historical development of discrimination and racism.

2007 the association of home-children in Germany estimated a number of 300.000 children in children’s homes. Considering the mass-custodies in the last years the amount could have risen to about 400.000 children in children’s homes and foster families. That is about the same amount like in the U.S., but Germany is much smaller and has 80 Million citizens, while the U.S. has more than 300 Million citizens. And while the U.S. reduce child custody, Germany’s Jugendämter inforce the custody.

When a Jugendamt takes children into custody and later finds out that the parents did not neglect or mistreat them, the Jugendamt accuses the parents to be “psychos” to keep the children in the measure. Even good parents are forced to make a psycho-test and expert witnesses of the Jugendämter are used to prove that the parents are psychos. That also happened with Heidi Schulz in the example. But she was happy to prove that the expert witness made a big mistake. That was a big exception.
Most parents have lost their children and they are not allowed to see them again.

Now the problems in Germany have been recognised by the UN and the U.S.:
In 2009 the U.S. granted a German family political asylum against the German authorities.
It was the first official case of political asylum for a German family after World War 2.
The parents wanted to educate their children in home-schooling what is not allowed in Germany. The Jugendamt tried to take the parents’ custody right away and sent their children in a children’s home. The family escaped overseas to the U.S. and found asylum, but they can never return to Germany, because the parents would be imprisoned.

Please, help us, here in Germany!
The employees of the German Jugendamt kidnap children from their parents (even when the parents are teachers and university professors) and keep them in children’s homes and foster families. The parents cannot do anything against it.
They can bring the case to court, but the German law does not allow the courts to give the Jugendamt any instructions. There is no instance/organisation above the Jugendamt that controls its measures. It is a situation like in Hitler Germany about 65 years ago.
Hitler Germany has “survived” in the German Jugendamt. 

Media in Germany is not allowed to report on this problem, because of “political correctness”. But now a few TV-magazines and newspapers do no longer respect the censorship.
Germans who report about the situation are treated from the Jugendamt by using the police.
The Germans have created a new non-official name for the Jugendamt. They call it “Kinderklaubehörde”, what means: authority that kidnaps children.

Please help us. Help must come from abroad. The German people are no longer able to help themselves against the Jugendamt.