Thought #460: Arriving in Germany: Good That You’re Here – an Invitation to Honest Exchange
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Dear friends from Ukraine, you’ve been with us for several years now, and it’s good that you’re here! Because you bring your experience with you – and because I, in turn, know from experience that Ukrainian people have many qualities we in Germany can benefit from.
Good that you’re here. We want to learn from you too, and you should know that you are valued as members of our society just as much as everyone else. It’s important that we also learn from newcomers, and above all from people from other so-called cultures and societies.
What Ukraine built without a “big sister”
In a short time, Ukraine managed to move forward, including in tackling corruption. Of course not everything has been achieved yet – that’s only logical. But I felt it myself, year after year: when I travelled to Ukraine in the summer with my partner at the time, who came from Kyiv, I noticed that things were moving forward. As a German, life in Kyiv kept getting easier for me – and not only for me.
I saw that the people there had built something, and they did it entirely without the help of a “big sister”. We Germans of course had West Germany, and that made it much easier for us to become part of the Federal Republic. Ukraine didn’t have that kind of big support. That’s why I believe that, all in all, Ukraine has achieved a lot.
I met so many people there who think positively. That always inspired me: that despite huge challenges, people didn’t constantly grumble and get worked up, but rolled up their sleeves. And that they were always one big family, organising themselves within the family network, talking things through there and making decisions – very democratically and, above all, very dynamically. I was always fascinated by that unbridled strength: that will to live, that ability to survive and that creativity. They developed a great many new things, above all in IT – in the Kharkiv hub, for example, but not only there – and that IT sector in turn pushed other sectors forward.
Why a million people are here – and what connects us
And maybe at this point many of my fellow Germans will say, when they read this: “Well, if everything is so great in Ukraine, why are those million people still here?”
My answer: because a war of aggression is raging there – and because we would do exactly the same! We GDR citizens, too, used every possible way back then to get our hands on the D-Mark, to get a better life, to get the freedom to travel and to live in freedom. And that’s exactly what Ukrainians are doing now.
It’s not about saying Ukrainians are better than Germans. We are something different, but a great deal connects us: we all love our children. We all want to be happy. We all want harmony, we want health, we want joy. That connects us, because we are all human, because we are all Homo sapiens.
This is no rose-tinted utopia – rather, let’s focus on what we have in common and start from there. And then look for solutions together.
Every human being should have the right to a fulfilled life. That includes having the basic needs of Maslow’s hierarchy met. And among the basic preconditions I count respect for human rights as defined by the UN (and, for refugees, the Geneva Refugee Convention), access to modern education that prepares you for life instead of just testing theoretical knowledge, healthcare, security and care in old age, mobility, and things like food and water. We live in a time in which this is definitely possible, technologically and economically. If it isn’t delivered, then it’s political will that stands in the way. And there aren’t that many places and countries in the world where these fundamentals are guaranteed.
An honest look at your situation today
To give you orientation and a way to navigate, we need to place where we stand as a society and politically. From my point of view, your situation has become harder. There are a few positive factors, but there are negative ones too. I see many people from Ukraine who are increasingly struggling with the challenges here. And the reason is not that you are weak as individuals or as people! It has nothing to do with you personally – these are decisions our society has made:
The step backwards in basic income support: When you arrived in 2022, we had a different government, one that put more weight on public services and invested more in the long term when it came to basic income support (called Bürgergeld from 2023). Back then it made life easier for the people at the very bottom! Bürgergeld was definitely better for everyone, and of course for the refugees too, who received it straight away – which I thought was right and still do. That has now been rolled back by the current Merz government. On top of that, the geopolitical situation has worsened, and that in turn means there are fewer jobs that people from Ukraine can do.
The language barrier in Germany: Germany is a society in which language skills are an absolute must! I believe there are other societies where language skills don’t play such a big role. Of course comparisons are always difficult, but I believe many Ukrainian refugees thought: I speak some English, so I’ll get by in Germany. That is not the case at all. In Germany, English plays practically no role as a common language – in everyday life it basically doesn’t exist. You can hardly communicate with anyone in English. You have to know German and prove it at a certain level. Most Ukrainian refugees fall at the hurdle of German, because they imagined learning the language differently, above all easier – because they had never been in a situation where they had to acquire a second language. My impression and my experience is that 95 percent of the roughly one million refugees from Ukraine are Russian speakers and hardly speak Ukrainian with each other at home. So they grew up speaking Russian and not bilingual. The language barrier, I believe, is still the biggest challenge.
Dead-end cheap jobs and German paper bureaucracy: And of course these cheap jobs: in Leipzig we had Momox, Mytheresa, DHL, Amazon, a bit of REWE too, retail and cleaning. That’s over – those jobs are taken. Maybe McDonald’s is still left, but none of these are jobs with a future. Even if they were willing to settle for these jobs, they wouldn’t get very far with them. Many Ukrainian refugees had a relatively high standard of living at home, were used to certain things and belonged to the upper class of society. Many of them were self-employed and thought they could make that self-employment work even better here. That’s not the case here at all. Germany is very bureaucratic, very paper-based, and has a very complex, by now also very outdated system that is hard to see through. And there they are, caught – they’re stuck in this trap. Going home to Ukraine is hardly an option for them, because nobody is waiting for them there. Many locals say: “What were you doing in the West for five years? You didn’t support us. You betrayed us. You don’t speak Ukrainian. You’re not a Ukrainian. Stay in your Germany.”
This is the picture from my point of view, and I could be wrong.
No bending, no hiding: our shared lab in Leipzig
This new series is called “Arriving in Germany”. It doesn’t necessarily need “Ukraine” on the label, because of course it affects people from other countries in a similar way. The Arabic-speaking community is affected in a very similar way, although the situation there is probably even harder. That’s why we’re focusing on Ukrainian refugees first.
In our SafeSpace and in our Stories on UNO.TEAM, we share experiences, and we’re shaping this space as an open lab – step by step, with concrete everyday questions: how do I communicate neutrally, not negatively, with the Jobcenter? How do I get along with my landlord? To do this, we also link this exchange directly to our interactive law quizzes under Life & Law.
At its heart, this is about exchange, and about having the courage to speak the way we really think and about what really moves us. Not bending ourselves out of shape, not bowing, not hiding and not putting on an act – and not sugar-coating anything either. When we see challenges, we have to name them first. That is the first important step.
And we can change this if we start by joining forces on a small scale. One person is enough to begin with – someone who reads this now and writes to me. If one person gets in touch with me, the first step is taken, and then more people will follow! And then the whole thing gets rolling.
You’re warmly welcome to join in and can contact me any time. We’re building something now, above all in Leipzig – that’s where we’re starting.
🤖 Reflection quiz on Thought #460
Three questions to keep thinking. Choose an answer – you will then get an explanation and a prompt for self-reflection.
What fascinated Torsten most on his summer trips to Kyiv and in his exchange with people from Ukraine? A) That the country received massive reconstruction aid from a “big sister” like West Germany. B) The unbridled vitality, the democratic decision-making within the family network and the creativity with which a strong IT sector (as in the Kharkiv hub) grew without outside help. C) That Ukraine had no economic problems whatsoever. D) That only big corporations run the economy there.
According to the post, why are many well-educated or formerly self-employed refugees from Ukraine caught in a “trap” in Germany? A) Because they lack any professional qualification or work experience. B) Because in Germany you can easily get through offices and working life with English alone. C) Because high German-language hurdles, a paper-based, bureaucratic system and basic income support that is stricter today than in 2022 meet people who were used to uncomplicated self-employment in Ukraine. D) Because registering a business is prohibited by law in Germany.
What approach is UNO.TEAM taking with the new series “Arriving in Germany” in Leipzig? A) An open lab at eye level, where everyday questions (Jobcenter, landlord, everyday law, self-employment) are named without sugar-coating and tackled together, step by step. B) A pure language course for the C2 certificate exam. C) A closed advice office for dealing with authorities, with fixed contracts. D) A pure news portal about Ukrainian domestic politics.
