A board member of Germany’s central bank dramatically resigned on Thursday after causing weeks of uproar with inflammatory comments on immigrants and Jews.
The Bundesbank had previously wanted German President Christian Wulff to fire Thilo Sarrazin, as it was unable to do so itself, and Sarrazin had been refusing to go quietly.
However, on Thursday the bank said it had “withdrawn its request” and that the 65-year-old had asked Wulff to relieve him of his duties. It even thanked Sarrazin “for the work he has done.”
The furor followed the publication of a new book by Sarrazin, Germany does itself in, and controversial remarks saw him branded racist and anti-Semitic and earned him sharp criticism from top politicians.
In the book, he says Europe’s top economy is being undermined, overwhelmed and made “more stupid” by poorly educated, fast-breeding, badly integrated and unproductive Muslim immigrants and their offspring.
“If I want to hear the muezzin’s call to prayer, then I’ll go to the Orient,” he says in the book, saying that allowing in millions of “guest workers” in the 1960s and 1970s was a “gigantic error.”
He also says that Turkish and Kurdish “clans” have a “long tradition of inbreeding,” leading to higher rates of birth defects and ponders whether this might be one reason for immigrants’ poor school performance.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the remarks “completely unacceptable” but surveys have indicated that Sarrazin enjoys considerable sympathy.
A survey published last Sunday indicated that if Sarrazin set up his own new political party, almost one in five (18 percent) would vote for him.
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