In the following chapter, we examine the contextual backdrop against which diversity education in Germany undergoes conceptual consideration. To begin, we focus on current problems and, via a historical review, describe certain key moments that have shaped the current understanding and construction of diversity in Germany. Following which, we present national projects and initiatives which focus on diversity in the context of cultural education. In particular, we introduce two specific projects from the context of music education and reflect upon them through the prism of the opened historical perspective. Finally, we indicate possible consequences for research on arts education taking into account cultural diversity.

The Various Constructions of Diversity and Otherness in Germany

Due to its very particular history, issues of diversity play a crucial, albeit specific, role for current German self-concepts and self-images, with a significant proportion of the German population appreciating diversity as part of the modern understanding of Germany’s role within Europe and the globalized world. The past five years, however, have given rise to a struggle between sincere hospitality and open hostility toward migrants (especially refugees). The present tensions are revealed on one hand through the emergence of right-wing movements such as “Pegida” and new right-wing parties such as “Alternative für Deutschland” (Alternative for Germany, roughly comparable to the British UKIP or the French Front National) and on the other hand, through strongly worded utterances made and significant measures taken toward cultural diversity, integration, and inclusion of people who have migrated to Germany.

Matters of diversity, however, have proven extremely complex even prior to these emergent events. In fact, a broad array of constructions of otherness have been established (and of course, transformed) throughout the postwar history of the Federal Republic of Germany. We shall elaborate on this diverse construction in order to demonstrate how complex the basis of all efforts in diversity education (historic and present) may prove to be. This may offer the insight that there is no “one” variety of diversity education, given the vastly different kinds of “diversities”. Cultural diversity in Germany includes (but is surely not limited to) several historical reference points:

  1. (1)

    The central historical trauma presented by the Holocaust has led to an intense and broad incorporation of Nazi history and crimes in all German school curricula (not limited to history lessons). Through this kind of political education, Nazi racism and their ways of constructing (inferior) otherness, often linked to popularized race or cultural stereotypes, are a well-known fact acknowledged by the majority.

  2. (2)

    Since the 1950s, and in the wake of the Second World War, there followed a history of immigration by foreign workers (deemed “Gastarbeiter”, i.e., “guest workers”) and their families, mostly from Southern European countries (Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece) and especially Turkey. Initially, and for quite a long time, foreign workers were conceptualized as temporary immigrants (throughout the 1950 and 1960s), and were not acknowledged nor recognized as immigrants, but as “Ausländer” (the German word for “foreigners”, which more literally translates to “outlanders”). This label served as a constant reminder that someone came from the “outside” and should depart again at some point in time, (just as the word “guest” historically refers to the Latin word “hostis”, meaning stranger and even enemy; in any case, someone who might enjoy hospitality, but is also foreign, potentially dangerous, and should leave in the near future). At the same time, as the economy in postwar Germany quickly recovered and rallied throughout the “Wirtschaftswunder” period (“economic miracle”), a broad public discussion of “foreign” culture emerged in German popular culture, thereby intermingling romanticized fantasies with the actual realities experienced by the “Gastarbeiter” in Germany, who often settled in rather cut-off (cheaper) neighborhoods, thus frequently leading, or at least contributing, to cultural segregation. German “Heimatfilme” (nostalgic homeland films, which saw their acme between the 1930 and 1960s) were supplanted by films featuring German families going on vacation in Southern European countries, especially Italy, which of course is iconic in German culture through the idealistic depictions by Goethe, Nietzsche, and others. Popular songs in 1950/60s era Germany began to express a yearning for “a journey to the Mediterranean Sea”, relating stories about “two little Italian guys” appreciating the “fishermen of Capri” and their ships glowing in the southern sunset. Later on, in the 1960 and 1970s, all these vastly subcomplex constructions of a cozy Southern European otherness shifted, at least to some degree, in favor of acknowledging the situations experienced by foreigners and guest workers in Germany. These constructs were always melancholic manner and sometimes employed topics as a projection for their own escapist fantasies. For example, songs about the “white roses of Athens” or “Greek wine” as a metaphor for far-away homelands.

  3. (3)

    The “Gastarbeiter”, however, have become an integral part of everyday German culture. Not only in popular music, but also through, for example, the popularization of foreign food culture. At the same time, the Gastarbeiter retained their special status for a long time until concepts of multiculturalism, transculturalism, and hybrid identities (e.g., dual citizenship) led to the acknowledgment and normalization of (former) migrants in the diverse migrant or even post-migrant German society of today. Currently, more than 21% of the population in Germany has a migrant background, 11.5% of which is accounted for by German citizens and 9.5% by non-Germans. It may come as no surprise that, again, popular media and arts shows play a major role in the processes of achieving diverse identities. Popular television shows and the rise of a multitude of self-confident and successful hip hop artists, have broadly established cultural changes such as the subculture slang of Turkish–German young people (referred to as “Kanak Sprak”).

  4. (4)

    Adding to the complexity of the cultural situation, in the course of the Second World War, many parts of (prewar) Germany had been lost, thus provoking the displacement of 12.3 million people. The ensuing refugees, referred to as “Heimatvertriebene” (homeland-displaced people), are traditionally oriented toward constructions of national (German) identity, meaning that their respective advocacy groups tend to associate more with conservative political parties and movements. Assuming an identity based on national(istic) identification with constructions of a German “Volk” (people) has always been in contrast with the self-image of major portions of the German public and their modernist self-image. This issue has once again come to the forefront due to the immigration of some 2.3 million “Russian Germans” since the opening-up of the USSR in the 1980s, who had a constitutional right (laid out in a refugee law from 1953) to return to their “historic homeland”. Obviously, the mass re-immigration of families having left Germany mostly in the 18th century would be at odds with the “Gastarbeiter” immigrants, (in the 1980s and 1990s) having been born and raised in Germany, while not necessarily being Germans.

  5. (5)

    The German “reunification”, which actually did not reunite both German states, but rather consisted of the accession of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), gave rise to new complexities. This lay first in the distinct “East German” identity which had been systematically formed by the Socialistic Union Party of the GDR (through education and policy). After reunification, the ensuing dual mentality led to a differentiation between “Wessis” (“Westerners”) and “Ossis” (“Easterners”), more often than not being used derogatorily by one “side” to refer to the other. As reunification was undertaken asymmetrically, with far-reaching effects on the East German economy as well on the established ways of living and overcoming the adversities of everyday life in a totalitarian regime, a kind of “victor’s historiography” surely must have resulted in the perception of many. Perhaps the following approximate narrative: The GDR was a failed state, and the FRG generously rescued the East German people, who bravely and successfully revolted against their state. Within this sequence of events, specialties developed in East German culture survived, again, primarily in popular culture. For example, through the preservation of the production of particular East German products such as chocolates which had come to be loved, despite being judged as inferior by West Germans. This was due to the fact that the manufacture of such products was associated with shortages and scarcities of basic materials. Therefore, reunification led to the persistence of a cultural difference—perhaps frequently more perceived and “felt” than real—of East versus West (Germany). That said, efforts to conceive an inner-German diversity education have proven rare, as this would have been detrimental to the formal equality of all German federal states and their inhabitants.

  6. (6)

    The GDR had its own immigration policies, very narrowly focusing on guest workers from Vietnam (about 60,000 people) and Mozambique (15,000 migrants, referred to as “Madgermanes”). Due to political decisions, these people had not been integrated, but separated. Thus, presenting very few opportunities for a socialistic “diversity education”—with the exception of Russian language and culture instruction—despite the “Socialist International” ideology. This, however, led to rather crude constructions of otherness, as it had been widely accepted and normalized to publicly refer to the Vietnamese derogatorily and showing blatant racism, as the “Fidschis” (the “Fijis”, in reference to the country Fiji) and blacks as “Neger” (a colonialist, racist term for black people of any origin). Given the fact that amongst the some 17 million people of the GDR, only a very small portion of the population stemmed from foreign parts of the world, this society exhibited a huge difference in perception, experience, and attitudes toward “otherness” compared to the already established immigration culture in West Germany in the early 1990s. This caused much confusion and trouble with regard to the question of what a “German identity” might refer to and signify.

  7. (7)

    Due to the fact that the recent refugee crisis (involving refugees from the Middle East and Africa) and its impact on European, especially German, politics and discourses have been widely recognized, it suffices to sum up the quite extreme complexities of this chapter by merely referring to the phenomenon in question and affirming that the refugee crisis, as may be evident, constitutes a very particular form of migration. This type of migration is often associated with severe traumatization, the loss of family members, and entering foreign and basically unknown social systems and cultural environments with barely sufficient language skills and orientational resources. At the same time, the refugee phenomenon intersects in unclear ways with established migrant narratives in that, for instance, refugees and Germans with a migration background are often identified by means of superficial characteristics such as skin color or an allegedly “typical” appearance. The very unresolved question as to what an “identity” might refer to or signify within the German migrant society is now being brought to the forefront via such processes, especially when they relate to xenophobia. Literally in every form of social encounter, this primarily pertains to (always socially/culturally constructed) “physical properties” as an indicator of identity. Against this background, it comes as little surprise that questions of Turkish-German identity and its relation to—however construed—“German mainstream” or the “core/guiding culture” have emerged just recently on the occasion of—but hardly on account of—the recent Turkish–German and Turkish–European political conflicts and debates.

  8. (8)

    Finally, after all these complexities pertaining to constructions of otherness and diversity, we have thus far glossed over the historically precedent issue relating to the last point of this list. Namely, the colonial constructions of otherness in the German discourse. While Germany played not the greatest, but indeed quite a major role in colonialism, its colonial history has been superimposed with the “paradigmatic evil” of German fascism. Germany’s role during colonial times is given little emphasis in school history lessons, and many Germans may barely be able to name the former German colonies properly or demonstrate detailed knowledge of key persons and events of this history. It is no coincidence that the Herero and Namaqua genocide (1904–1907) was brought into the German public consciousness only recently. The German government denied responsibility for it until 2012, and only recently, in 2015, was it acknowledged by the German Foreign Office. This syndrome, which suggests a significant lack of accountability for Germany’s colonial past, is accompanied by other symptoms as well. In that same year of 2015, the Bavarian Minister of the Interior referred to a very popular black Brazilian–German entertainer, with no deliberate willingness to insult, a “wunderbarer Neger” (“wonderful negro”), “who most Germans were incredibly fond of”. While this utterance is undoubtedly objectively racist, the fact that a top-ranking politician used it publicly in the most naïve manner, even in an attempt to praise the person in question, clearly demonstrates how, in modern German society, the attitude toward colonial constructions of race and otherness differs extremely from that of? Nazi constructions of race and otherness, even if the two are intrinsically connected historically. Had this Bavarian minister called a Jewish–German entertainer “a wonderful Jew who most Germans were incredibly fond of”, he would undoubtedly have ended his career immediately, inflicting major damage upon his administration and party.

As this account above shows, the agenda of “diversity education” (not exclusively, but certainly in Germany) is confronted with, and challenged by, very historically routed layers of constructions of otherness, as well as histories of (im)migration, histories of conceptual and political constructions, and histories of handling and dealing with (perceived) otherness and foreignness. As previously stated, the question is, what can and shall indeed be—precisely, tangibly, and specifically—taken to be the “otherness” that underlies “diversity education”. One should resist the dangerously naïve assumption that “diversity” might, in practice, exhibit the openness of the theoretical term. As an organizational encounter, every measure of diversity education needs to define its target groups and its didactic objectives and objects. That said, every measure of diversity education must first of all inevitably undertake precise reflection upon the underlying principles of its own construction of “diversity” against the backdrop of its own historical points and blind spots. Second, it must take into account the fact that every decision to define diversity in a (practically) meaningful way implies the exclusion of other modes regarding perspectives on diversity.

We shall now proceed with two topical examples of diversity-oriented projects in Germany, and shall conclude our considerations with another reminder of cultural constructions, this time relating to the culturality of scientific constructions of “arts education”.

Diversity Education in Arts Education in Germany: Two Examples

The described historical relationships and structures not only affect the construction and understanding of diversity, but also have an impact on the co-existence and social challenges in Germany. Thus, it cannot be denied that certain groups of people have much more difficulty accessing education, art, and culture in Germany, that certain groups of people and their issues in traditional cultural institutions are not represented and that the awareness of diversity in many contexts of culture, arts, and education is only slowly being raised.

The issue of diversity in the context of cultural education plays a role in German public promotion in two respects. On the one hand, there is the question of the role of cultural education amidst a diverse society. On the other hand, the possibility of and necessity for developing and modifying structures and institutions is subject to discussion so that social diversity can also be reflected in art and culture.

Since 2013, the Germany-wide funding program “Kultur macht stark” (“Empowerment through Culture”) has been sponsoring extracurricular education in the areas of the arts and cultural education with over a hundred million euros with the objective to increase equality in education. It is a fact that educationally disadvantaged children also have a much more difficult time accessing extracurricular leisure-time activities in the field of arts and culture. Cultural education, according to its formulated aspiration, enables disadvantaged children and young people to participate in cultural life and opens up new educational opportunities.

The question of developing institutional structures and individual means to take action is addressed within the Germany-wide KIWit Competence Network for cultural integration and knowledge transfer (Kompetenzverbund Kulturelle Integration und Wissenstransfer). In addition to enabling as many social groups as possible to participate in art and culture, it also fosters diversity-conscious action by individual actors and institutions. The Competence Network discusses these questions with different stakeholder groups and links together good practice examples. The objective is to increase awareness of diversity and initiate knowledge transfer and structural development. The arts are understood to be a central and connecting element. In addition to KIWit, there are other groups and networks focusing on diversity awareness in cultural education both in terms of practice and research.

When examining national initiatives and structures, it must be borne in mind that at the local level, there have been many years of practical experience in carrying out projects that address various social structures and their use in artistic work as well as in the context of arts education. The diversity of these projects will be illustrated by means of two examples from the field of music education.

In 2012, the public Theatre of Freiburg initiated a project entitled “Heim und Flucht Orchester”. This project provides a venue for young musicians to meet once a week and make music together. Heim can mean home or homeland. In German, this word connotes a feeling of comfort, safety, and calmness. In contrast to this, the word Flucht means flight (in the sense of fleeing). This term infers movement, dynamics, and fear. The members of the orchestra include young Freiburg natives as well as young refugees. In their everyday life, the orchestra members have no points of contact. The refugees are from Africa, Iraq, Serbia, or Syria and live in refugee shelters. They are obliged to learn German and struggle with the legal aspects of their asylum. Contrastingly, the young German musicians concentrate on graduating from school, friends, and holidays—that is to say the preoccupations of young people living in safe conditions. The musical approaches of these two groups are in stark contrast. While the German members learn classical orchestra instruments in nonformal music schools with a focus on classical European music, members of other cultural backgrounds learn their instruments without sheet music by means of oral tradition. They are familiar with improvisation, complicated rhythms, and scales little-known to Europeans.

In the “Heim and Flucht Orchester”, members share their backgrounds and notions of music and create new ways of making music which incorporate components from their different cultures, whether it be rhythms from Africa, classical European music, Balkan beats, or Arabian melodies, to name a few. As the accompaniment to professional theater productions, this music is incorporated in municipal theatrical works.

The second project we wish to share is part of a worldwide movement. Ethno is a program by Jeunesses Musicales International pursuing intercultural understanding in order to enable exchanges between European, Middle Eastern, African, Asian, and American regions. Ethno invites young people from different countries and cultures to make music based upon the traditional music of their individual cultural backgrounds. At camping retreats, combining workshops, jam sessions, and performances, the participants become acquainted with a variety of musical styles, learn different tunes and lore, and invent new tunes on their own. Ethno camps regularly take place once a year in Australia, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, India, Uganda, and Cyprus, and since 2013, also in Germany. The program has a unique approach. For one week the participants live and learn together at a camp. Everyone contributes one song from their background culture and teaches it to the other participants. The music is taught through oral transmission directly from person to person and without sheet music. Additionally, the program adheres to a peer-learning approach: More experienced Ethno participants act as lead musicians, supporting their fellow participants with learning and creating. The result is a very lively and authentic musical experience. Ethno appeals to young musicians of the traditional folk and jazz scene as well as musicians with a classical background. Currently, a work group is developing a program entitled “Ethno Education” whose aim is to implement these ideas involving oral tradition and peer learning in music teaching and diversity education in schools.

Upon consideration of the two examples indicated above, we may notice that both projects operate based on different imaginations of cultural otherness and inter-/transcultural esthetic encounters. The Heim und Flucht Orchester pursues a mode of fostering community by means of uniting diverse forms of musical (cultural) vocabularies, thereby creating a kind of third musical space. The Ethno program adheres to a logic of a deep examination and involvement of “the other” according to, first, oral culture and teaching as a mode of cultural encounter, and second, not “confounding” those forms, but rather working through the otherness of, say, unknown and perceived unfamiliar sounds, meter, scales, and harmonies. This process entails encountering and acquiring what appears “foreign” through one’s own musical personality, inevitably forming a new habitus—much like Wilhelm von Humboldt’s thought of the acquisition of a foreign language (in his case, the idealized antique Greek language and culture) as a way to truly immerse oneself in a foreign culture, in order to return from this immersion enriched and with a broader, evolved personality.

Both projects may pursue their approaches to “culturality” in a naively naturalized manner. Indeed, the question might be raised as to whether the most significant set of differences in the two projects might not be cultural in nature, given the fact that technology-related differences or milieu-specific aspects, for instance, might have possibly more closely bonded together a younger generation of musicians (having grown up in the context of a global musical discourse), despite the presupposed cultural differences, contrary to older musicians and their traditional concepts (irrespective of their origins). Therefore, both projects presuppose a particular notion of cultural heritage from the start and are both oriented, within this framework, toward classical European forms of music and making music. Both seem—more or less—to tie “cultural difference” to geographical distance, such that, given the enumeration of diversities indicated above, only the seventh mode (refugee migration) is taken into account, thus excluding other, equally relevant, forms of diversity. This is not to say that these two projects are ill-defined or badly constructed in any way, but it perhaps suggests a lack of consideration in addressing other modes of diversity which should undergo closer examination and assessment in the future.

The Culturality of Constructions in “Arts Education” in Arts Education Research

As researchers, we must not only reflect upon the implicit cultural constructions of our subjects within our fields, but also upon our own contributions to such constructions. After all, cultural blind spots may all too easily be perpetuated, and thereby affirmed and deepened (instead of criticized) if research does not reflect its own relations on these cultural (and also political, policy-defined) constructions (cf. Akuno et al. 2015).

In contemplating international research, we must address a further level of diversity (Jörissen et al. 2018; Jörissen and Unterberg 2018): We, as researchers participating in this discourse are diverse as well. As we have shown in the first part of this chapter, the concept of diversity in Germany is based on specific social, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Also, the concepts of “arts” vary historically as well as globally. Likewise, the term “arts education” and its associated concepts have quite “diverse” meanings in an international context. This diversity is accounted for, among other things, by:

  1. (i)

    different histories of artistic practice and educational discourses, resulting in different heritages of “arts education” which are quite complex in and of themselves

  2. (ii)

    different basic concepts of “arts”

  3. (iii)

    different understandings of the very process of “education” as a matter of scientific reflection and research

  4. (iv)

    different conceptions regarding the “person to be educated”—normative ideas aiming to bring those respective persons “into being”—which leads to the last point:

  5. (v)

    different ideas about the goals to be achieved by arts education.

In part, these differences may stem from different cultural traditions, values, and world views. In a globalized, and to some degree, transculturalized world, other dimensions must be taken into account regarding our very discursive space of arts education research. For example, we consider the “speaker position” in the field: research perspectives from trained artist educators may differ significantly from research perspectives of pedagogical researchers, and both might differ even more significantly from educational research perspectives, e.g., of learning psychologists, and so on.

If we examine agenda-setting concerning arts and education comparatively in terms of topical construction, significant differences are revealed, particularly when it comes to understanding the term “arts”. In Anglo-American and European interpretations, the word is a fixed umbrella term for the established arts such as music, dance, fine arts, visual arts, theater/drama, and literature/poetry and is found as a topical construction about twice as often as in texts from other countries. Furthermore, in terms of methodology, the authors from Anglo-American and European countries mentioned in Bresler (2007) make twice as many “programmatic” contributions, meaning those based on theoretical positions with normative implications, rather than on empirical studies.

What we have briefly demonstrated with regard to the term “arts” certainly also applies to a complex term such as diversity. In the context of the UNITWIN network, we as researchers have the unique opportunity to engage in critical discourse regarding our own terms and concepts and help each other to establish transparency and draw each other’s attention to our blind spots. We are constantly challenged to grant visibility and a platform to the disadvantaged in less of a position to speak for themselves, to cast light upon marginalized concepts, and to pose each other questions.