Russian-German Immigrants in Germany and their Intercultural Communication

Abstract

Global Migration processes illustrate and show the urgent need for action on understanding each other to better. Due to the increased and deliberate exchange between people from different cultures a significant contribution to mutual understanding and to the development of mutual tolerance and intercultural exchange should or even must be made. Interesting examples for this are Russian-Germans who immigrated from Russia to Germany in the 1990s. These Germans have a very long time lived in Russia and thus developing a sense of cultural belonging to the Germans, as to the Russian culture. After their return to Germany, the parties of native Germans as the immigrated Germans agreed that there were great cultural differences between them. It was hard to deal with these cultural differences and to understand each other. The following paper will first explain background of the Russian-Germans. Then it discusses their return to Germany. The main part of this thesis deals with the challenges of cross-cultural understanding between native Germans and Russian-Germans as well as the reasons for these challenges. Furthermore the main part of this article shows on why intercultural understanding and tolerance between cultures is important.