Boryano Rickum: "Citizenship is just a piece of paper"

I was born and raised in Germany.

My mother is French, my father is from Indonesia and was a soldier in the navy.

On a visit to Germany in the mid-1960s, he deserted and became a radio officer in the German merchant marine.

I had a French passport until I was 18 and then became German to avoid being drafted into the military in France.

As a Frenchman, I should have gone to Montpellier for military service in the late 1990s, but I didn't want to.

I didn't speak the language perfectly and had somehow heard that the French military still used caning.

So I naturalized in Germany when I was 19.

Justus Bender

Editor in the politics of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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At school there was a panel discussion between those who wanted to do civilian service and those who were drawn to the Bundeswehr.

The Zivis have totally misbehaved.

And yet the Bundis said to them: "We think what you do is super important." That impressed me.

At the time I thought you can only talk about the Bundeswehr if you've been there yourself.

I see things differently today, but that's how I did military service in Germany.

I wanted to give something back to the country.

I was happy to live in a country where I could go to school and get my high school diploma for free.

Thanks to Bafög, I was able to study in Germany and write a doctoral thesis with a scholarship.

I know I live in a country of many privileges.

But I didn't do that with naturalization because I feel like a patriot.

I don't have a particularly emotional relationship with Germany, you can only have that with friends or family.

I find something like love for Germany very difficult as a legal requirement for citizenship.

People without a migration background don't all love their country either, so why should we do that?

Emotions can neither be checked nor demanded.

Should it be about who paints the colors of Germany on their face at the World Cup?

Most become German for incredibly pragmatic reasons.

After all, the passport is just a piece of paper.

I think it's a pretty crazy idea to see German citizenship as a kind of reward.

On the contrary, Germany should be happy if we want to naturalise.

Where would this country be today without us?

Sometimes a picture is drawn of us people with a migration background as if we were like the barbarians invading Rome.

That's totally absurd.

Immigration into the social systems has nothing to do with naturalization.

As if most people would really like to live on the support.

And you have to earn your own living or be in an apprenticeship, otherwise you can't become German at all.

Mr. A.: "I already feel like a German"

I was born in Mogadishu in 1994.

But the authorities don't believe me.

They distrust all Somali government documents issued after 1991.

I've been fighting for years to get the immigration authorities to recognize my identity.

I've been living in Germany for twelve years now.