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  SPIEGEL Special - The Germans: Is There a German Melting Pot?

SPIEGEL Special - The Germans Is There a German Melting Pot?

By Bruno Schrep

Part 3: Part Three: Segregation and the "Wave" phenomenon.

Another reason: the disco in number 5. Back when it was called Pam-Pam, right up until the 1980s, U.S. soldiers stationed in Wiesbaden would slug it out until dawn -- every payday. It had become something of a local tradition.

Later, however, scores of hollow-faced figures, male and female, would slink around the disco nightly, which was now called Anadolu. Heroin was the attraction, smuggled in through Kurdish channels and sold at rock-bottom prices that no other dealer could touch. The street had degenerated into a drug haven.

"When I opened the store in the morning, I often found half-dead junkies lying outside," one local businessman remembers. Robberies, thefts and stabbings were commonplace. The nightmare didn't end until the addicts and dealers were finally driven out by a series of narc raids.

In the Wellritz pharmacy on the corner, where trembling addicts would beg for opiate substitutes like codeine or methadone, totally different drugs are now in hot demand. "Lots of people want Viagra over the counter," says pharmacist Gabriele Fischer. "I could sell the stuff by the case for three to four times the regular price."

But Gabriele Fischer has always refused to sell the drug without a prescription. The picture was different in the Theresien pharmacy down the street, a century-old institution. The German owner, apparently strapped for cash, got into the business in a big way.

Last summer customs officials at Istanbul Airport inspected his baggage. The contents: packets of black-market Viagra by the thousands. The pharmacist was arrested and consigned to a Turkish prison.

The old Theresien pharmacy is gone. A few German stores have braved the storm, like tiny islands in the ocean. Specialty shops that have been serving an established customer base for decades.

The owners: gruff, dogged, iron-willed characters. Cantankerous old Hans-Georg Schaefer of "Fishing Rod Schaefer" stocks more than 10,000 angling articles: hooks, rods, bait. Adi Rossel from the paint store across the street is showing off a new machine that mixes 170,000 different colors.

Hans-Juergen Velte's store is a paradise for badminton fans, while Hans-Peter Pischinger sells professional apparel -- from overalls to the tailcoats worn by conductors. Foreign customers are a rare sight here. Too specialized, too expensive. Conflicts, by contrast, are common.

Backed by city officials, the new café owners and bar operators want more tables and chairs on the sidewalk. More business, more life, more big-city flair. But the German merchants are up in arms over the idea, which would cut the available parking. They fear that their customers, most of whom come from other neighborhoods, would end up "driving to distraction." Segregation, not integration. Newly opened stores have scant prospect of staying in business as long as the old German shops. For one simple reason -- a phenomenon known as "the wave."

"I should have stayed in Turkey," rails Muntaz Baki as he lathers a customer's chin. The 41-year-old invested more than 50,000 euros in his barbershop, splashing out on elegant lighting, comfortable chairs, new sinks and a separate women's section. And now this! As word began to spread that Baki's business was booming, the copycats started drifting in. Here a barbershop. There a barbershop. Before you knew it, everywhere a barbershop. The result: a ruinous price war. Initially Baki was charging 15 euros for a cut, wash and dry. He soon had to shave 3 euros off the price, and then trim it down to 10. But the competition is charging 8 - and the customers dry their own hair.

The barbershop wave was preceded by bakery and kebab waves. And a new one is currently gaining momentum. Whenever a store closes, a telephone shop opens.

The idea is basically good: the rates for psychedelic-colored cell phones with funky ring tones (a must for the socially mobile) are prohibitive for calls to Marrakech or Islamabad. Using a low-cost provider's fixed network at a telephone shop is at least 80 percent cheaper. Low profit margins, however, only work in highly frequented venues. But after the fourth and then fifth phone shop opened its doors, each charging just fractions of a cent less, the crowds have thinned appreciably. Segregation, not integration.

"People just need the right advice," says Bernd Ohl, an affable, gray-haired man in his early 50s. He hands out business cards promising: "I'll advise you like a friend."

An invention of his own making, the man numbers among the street's most colorful characters. Once he managed the branch office of a major insurance company. After being put on early disability retirement, he went looking for a new mission in life. Now he sits in the back room of the Westend Café, squeezed between the ready-made dough and industrial freezers, cooking up life-saving plans for moribund stores and quick pick-me-ups for faltering businesses. "Once I was a big pawn," he says. "Here I'm a small king." Inspired by visions of multicultural harmony, Bernd Ohl is striving to make his mark on the street. He has persuaded a jeweler, a hairdresser and the owner of a fashion store to invest in image enhancement and coordinate strategies. He wants the expensive stores to lure more German customers to Wellritzstrasse. The name of his project: Only Women.

But there's no guarantee of success. "As a woman, you constantly get hit on down here," says Nadine Durel, an office worker with nice clothes, long hair and a pretty face. She lived on the street for three years before finally moving out. She was fed up with the everyday hassles.

The mere thought of middle-eastern men can work her into a rage. "If you're wearing tight jeans or a skimpy T-shirt, you're automatically fair game." Although of Turkish origin herself, the 23-year-old is most upset about the hypocrisy. "Pedestrians with head scarves are left alone," she says. "Muslim women are off-limits." Theoretically.

Friday, 11:30 p.m. Loud music is blaring onto the street through the thick walls of a former school; an imposing structure from the Wilhelminian era (1888 - 1914) housing numerous social agencies. The middle-eastern rhythms are reverberating from the ground-floor restaurant, Aspendos.

Inside, in semidarkness, a dark-haired, scantily clad, well-endowed woman is gyrating her hips, shaking her booty and bouncing her breasts. Donsaf, the young Tunisian belly dancer, sweeps through the restaurant on her 20-minute gig. Straight out of Arabian Nights.

The male guests, sitting in a semi-circle, are urging her on with rhythmic clapping. A few dance along. Some slip money inside her beaded bra when she comes within reach.

The pleasure generated by Donsaf's gyrations is considered a tradition, not a sin. And the beer the men are drinking as they watch? "Allah will be looking the other way," one quips.

Many of the street's Muslim men have married women from their home villages, some at the behest of their parents. But many also break their marriage vows, have girlfriends, get divorced. One wellknown businessman, married for years and the father of three, has just tried to square the circle. He was wed for a second time before an imam, this time to his girlfriend.

Now he has two wives. "One before God above, and one before his proxy down here," he says. Sitting on that fence is quite a balancing act.

Most Muslim women have never been to a restaurant on their own. Announcing "The Women Are Coming," several had planned to join forces with a few German women and venture into one of the street's typical, male-dominated haunts. In the end they only mustered enough courage for the restaurant Harput, the street's main attraction and symbol of the new prosperity. Lured by the exotic ambience and affordable prices, many German office workers from downtown lunch here -- on shish kebab, tripe and lamb pita.

But there is an invisible fissure running through the Harput, of all places. The two owners hail from two completely different worlds. Their conflict highlights the chasm that not only separates Germans and foreigners, but many immigrants on the street as well. The name of the fault line: religion.

One of the Harput's owners, Ali Cal, is an ambitious young entrepreneur just like his fellow countrymen Bucak and Topcu. He has been living here since he was 12 and is a fully assimilated member of the community.

He proudly presents a blue business card showcasing his picture in living color. The card identifies him as a local politician from the conservative Christian Democratic Union, and a member of a local advisory committee. With equal pride, he footnotes that he is also president of the Fasching Association and helps organize the annual carnival festivities. And what about religion? "I believe in God," Cal says. That's as far as it goes, he adds.

But his business partner, Ebubekir Duran, is a Muslim who lives strictly according to the laws of the Koran. He has insisted that no alcohol be served at the restaurant, which cuts into sales in the evenings. And that customers with dogs remain outside.

The devout man has sublet rooms right across the street in number 14, to similarly devout shopkeepers who sell Muslim books and clothing there. Their window display includes books with titles like "Allah's Last Message," "Why I Wear a Head Scarf" and "The Path to Proper Prayer."

A smell of incense and sound of monotone singing fill the store. The customers, mostly Muslim women, arrive in groups of two or three, giggle as they try on the headscarves, and jockey for position around the burkas, the traditional coat-like shawl that keeps curves well under wraps. The shop owner is a rosycheeked Muslim: Susanne Seifert from the Mombach district of Mainz. A former Protestant, the German woman used to wear a more secular uniform. As a police officer she hunted down thieves and traffic violators. But since 1997, when she married a Moroccan and converted to Islam, she too has lived by the Koran. Her thriving store is also a hub for conservative Islamists: young Sunni Koran students, some wearing long beards and robes. Most are Moroccan.

German customers only happen by occasionally. Non-believers arouse suspicion. Mistrust runs deep since 9/11. The mood is poisoned.

"Some just turn up and ask what people are trying to prove with 'this terrorism,'" the German Muslim says. To which she politely replies, "Kindly tell me what that has to do with Islam."

The store sells a book entitled "September 11th. An Investigative Report" for 20 euros. Its German author argues that the World Trade Center was blown up from inside and that the media coverage was faked.

Liberal Muslims would like the Islamic bookstore to go away. "It ruins the street's reputation," one says. "We've already had the first installment."

A December morning: at 6 a.m., police stormed the mosque run by the Islamic Association inside number 34, scouring every inch of the place and even slitting open the mattresses. They were looking for terrorist propaganda, published on the website www.dzihad.de from here after 9/11.

Islamic books and magazines were seized. The mosque, a regular meeting place for followers of the Islamic extremist Metin Kaplan, was shut down.

Questions were even raised about the building's owner Baki Yesilbas, until that day the toast of the street, thanks to his tasty doner kebabs. Was the owner of the Ali Baba snack bar really ignorant of what was going on?

"I've never prayed in that mosque," pleads the 38-year-old Kurd. Although a Sunni Muslim, he is not particularly religious and has zero interest in politics, he maintains. All he cares about is his business. "Hypocrites," says a local jeweler.

"The Muslims pretend to be liberal, but in reality they're totally different." After 9/11 plenty of Muslims had been secretly pleased. Out on the street, drawings depicting bin Laden raping U.S. President Bush made the rounds.

The jeweler and his brother run a beautifully remodeled store, one of the street's finest. He also has an axe to grind: as an orthodox Aramaic Christian, he had to flee southeastern Turkey with his family and was granted asylum in Germany. He does not trust his Muslim neighbors on either side of his store. The brothers, who consider themselves descendants of the original Christians, are very religious. They regularly attend the services held in their small church, and their priest sometimes drops by during the lunch-hour rush.

Step by laborious step, an old bag lady limps along the length of the street one Wednesday morning, beseeching her Maker. But no one knows which god she's addressing. A customer at the Westend Café gives her 50 cents. Outside the Turkish travel agency she garners a euro, and at Mini-Money, the chaotic supermarket, a passerby even shells out two.

Whenever someone gives her a coin, she stops and points her cane mutely toward the sky: the Almighty will reward you.