The word “biodeutsch” is often used on social media. It is used to “classify, evaluate and discriminate against people on the basis of supposedly biological criteria of origin”. This is stated by the independent campaign “Unwort des Jahres” (Unword of the Year) in a press release. In German, the term “unword” is used to describe terms that are discriminatory and misleading or that violate human dignity.
A racist construction
The jury, made up of linguists and a journalist, says that the term was originally used ironically as a satirical term, combining “biological” and “German”. This has since changed: “The word ‘biodeutsch’ constructs a racist, biologistic form of nationality,” the jury said in a press release.
Migrants are devalued
In doing so, “being German” is justified in natural terms “in order to distinguish and devalue Germans with a migration background”. “Biodeutsch” is used “to ascribe unequal characteristics to groups of people who are equal before the law, thus classifying them hierarchically”. The jury criticizes this discriminatory use of the word. It violates the idea of democratic equality and inclusion. Furthermore, it privileges the imagined community of “biodeutsc” over groups “who are excluded from the racist construct of the supposed ‘biodeutsch’”.
European genes: all from immigrants
From a biological point of view, the term ‘biodeutsch’ is also meaningless and unusable: there is no such thing as a ‘biodeutsch’. The young discipline of paleogenetics compares the genomes of people living today with those of people who lived in the past, from whose bone samples their genome can be reconstructed. According to this, about 50 percent of the genetic material of people living in Europe today comes from the steppe riders who migrated from the area of present-day Kazakhstan 5,000 years ago. The people who migrated from Anatolia 8,000 years ago and introduced agriculture to Europe left behind 40 percent. The last 10 percent or so comes from the hunters and gatherers who have been migrating from Africa to Europe via the Middle East for about 40,000 years. These proportions vary only slightly between the different regions of Europe. More on this at:
Light skin came to Europe through migration | tuenews
Personal non-word: “imported anti-Semitism”
A total of 3172 suggestions for the non-word 2024 were received by the jury in Marburg. It is supplemented by changing guests every year. This time, they were joined by publicist and political scientist Saba-Nur Cheema and publicist, historian and educator Meron Mendel. Their personal “Unwort” (un-word) is “importierter Antisemitismus” (imported anti-Semitism). Their reasoning: This expression suggests “that hatred of Jews has become a problem particularly with the influx of migrants (from Arab countries). This formulation is used primarily in right-wing circles “to marginalize Muslims and people with a migrant background and to distract from their own anti-Semitism”. In addition, Muslims “who were socialized in Germany in the second or third generation and have German citizenship are portrayed as ‘imported’ and thus as non-German and not belonging to society”.
Press release:
Unwort des Jahres | pdf
The “un-word” of the year was “remigration”. See tun24011603.
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