Diversity In Germany Research Articles

Agrivoltaics in Germany - Status Quo and Future Developments

Ground-mounted photovoltaic facilities in open spaces have been common in Germany for many years. However, according to the legislation, these are only supported by the government on poorer quality soils, former military training areas, or along traffic routes. Nevertheless, also on high quality soils it is not forbidden to install ground-mounted photovoltaic facilities. In recent years, Germany has started implementing agrivoltaics, which is an alternative land use concept that combines agriculture and renewable energy production. This opens the possibility to use land of higher soil quality for energy generation without necessarily creating land-use conflicts and being subsidized by the government. This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of existing and planned agrivoltaic facilities in Germany analyzing them based on various parameters. The data for this study was collected through a community questionnaire and supplemented with data from state institutions. The results indicate that as of March 2023, 21 agrivoltaic facilities with a total capacity of 81.67 MWp have been installed. A strong increase of the installed capacity is expected in 2023 and 2024, reaching approximately 382.59 MWP by the end of 2024. The market development of agrivoltaics is mainly driven by changes in the legal environment which present opportunities for further market ramp-up of agrivoltaics. The adoption of agrivoltaics shows a notable spatial diversity in Germany which appears to be influenced by the interaction between regulatory environments and agricultural structures.

Practices of Tolerance: The Significance of Common Sense in Settings of Dense Coexistence

Deriving from the growing cultural and religious diversity in Germany and the need for educational professionals to be able to deal with heterogeneous groups and communicate to children about how to coexist peacefully with others, this essay focuses on the relationship between common sense and tolerance, particularly in places of inescapable dense coexistence characterised by religious and cultural diversity. Using institutions of preschool and primary education as an example, the extent to which peaceful coexistence and conflict resolution is borne by common sense and supported by practices of tolerance is discussed. Subsequently, the significance of a common-sense approach to practices of tolerance for conceptualising ethical judgement in intercultural and inter-religious education is explored. The article closes with thoughts on the contribution of religious ethics to questions of human coexistence in highly dense and conflict-ridden contexts and briefly addresses aspects of Protestant social ethics.

Scratching the tip of the iceberg: integrative taxonomy reveals 30 new species records of Microgastrinae (Braconidae) parasitoid wasps for Germany, including new Holarctic distributions.

Substantial parts of the European and German insect fauna still remain largely unexplored, the so-called "dark taxa". In particular, midges (Diptera) and parasitoid wasps (Hymenoptera) are abundant and species-rich throughout Europe, yet are often neglected in biodiversity research. One such dark taxon is Microgastrinae wasps (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), a group of parasitoids of lepidopteran caterpillars with 252 species reported in Germany so far. As part of the German Barcode of Life Project GBOL III: Dark Taxa, reverse DNA barcoding and integrative taxonomic approaches were used to shed some light on the German Fauna of Microgastrinae wasps. In our workflow, DNA barcoding was used for molecular clustering of our specimens in a first step, morphological examination of the voucher specimens in a second step, and host data compared in a third step. Here, 30 species are reported for the first time in Germany, adding more than 10% to the known German fauna. Information for four species is provided in a new Holarctic context, reporting them for the Nearctic or, respectively, Palaearctic region, and 26 additional country records are added from sequenced material available in the collections accessible to us. Molecular clusters that show signs of discrepancies are discussed. Results show that we are just scratching the tip of the iceberg of the unexplored Microgastrinae diversity in Germany.

Characterising two German city networks: the interplay of internal structure, issue orientation and outreach strategies

ABSTRACT Making use of qualitative data from case studies on two of the most important city networks in the field of migration and diversity in Germany, this contribution aims to deepen the understanding of city networks and their modes of operation. Based on a literature review covering the characteristics of city networks we propose an analytical framework that distinguishes between the dimensions of internal and external representation. This framework enables the analysis of the two cases: Deutscher Städtetag (Association of German Cities) and Kommunaler Qualitätszirkel zur Integrationspolitik (Municipal Quality Circle on Integration Policy). While the former is an umbrella organisation of larger cities, the latter can be described as an informal network of likeminded municipalities in the field of migration and diversity. In order to shed light on the interplay of structure, strategies and issues addressed by these networks (in the field of migration), we draw on the analysis of various documents as well as participant observation and face-to-face interviews. Concluding, we critically discuss the conventional characteristics of city networks and develop assumptions on how a network’s structure influences its outreach strategies.

The Hamburg Circle: A Thoroughly Structured Expression of the German Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic

The members of the Hamburg Circle: W. Stapel (the leading figure), H. Bogner, A.E. Günther, G. Günther, are usually attributed to the ‘young conservative’ trend of the conservative revolution in the Weimar Republic. The main platform of their expression was the Deutsches Volkstum, a monthly published in Hamburg between 1898 and 1938. The activists of the circle opposed the realities of the Weimar Republic, negating the foundations of a democratic and liberal society as it did not express the ‘national will’ of Germans. Their ideal was not exactly in the revival of monarchy but they proposed a national state which was supposed to promote the traditionally structured society. In the area of religious policy, Stapel and his colleagues aimed at a non-secular state with a form of traditionalistic church life in spite of the religious diversity in Germany. Christianity was not perceived from a purely spiritual perspective, but as a doctrine that should be a strong pillar of the state. The Hamburg Circle claimed that to achieve these goals Germans ought to reject liberalism and pacifism, which appeared to be a dangerous consequence of the ideological pressure from assimilated Jewry.

Buzzing Homes: Using Citizen Science Data to Explore the Effects of Urbanization on Indoor Mosquito Communities.

Simple SummaryMany mosquito species can transmit pathogens and may pose a risk to human health. With increasing urbanization and alteration of natural habitats, the composition of mosquito communities is changing, with some species thriving particularly well in and adjacent to human settlements. In the present study, indoor mosquito collections submitted to the citizen science project ‘Mückenatlas’ were used to investigate the composition, abundance, and diversity of species of different urbanization levels, and to detect preferences for less or more urbanized areas. We found that species richness and diversity decreases with increasing urbanization, and some important vector species are captured most frequently in densely urbanized regions. Our results highlight the importance of long-term mosquito monitoring to learn how these vectors respond to habitat change caused by humans. Only with sufficient knowledge about the ecology of mosquitoes can we assess risks, plan counter strategies, and take action.Urbanization has been associated with a loss of overall biodiversity and a simultaneous increase in the abundance of a few species that thrive in urban habitats, such as highly adaptable mosquito vectors. To better understand how mosquito communities differ between levels of urbanization, we analyzed mosquito samples from inside private homes submitted to the citizen science project ‘Mückenatlas’. Applying two urbanization indicators based on soil sealing and human population density, we compared species composition and diversity at, and preferences towards, different urbanization levels. Species composition between groups of lowest and highest levels of urbanization differed significantly, which was presumably caused by reduced species richness and the dominance of synanthropic mosquito species in urban areas. The genus Anopheles was frequently submitted from areas with a low degree of urbanization, Aedes with a moderate degree, and Culex and Culiseta with a high degree of urbanization. Making use of citizen science data, this first study of indoor mosquito diversity in Germany demonstrated a simplification of communities with increasing urbanization. The dominance of vector-competent species in urban areas poses a potential risk of epidemics of mosquito-borne diseases that can only be contained by a permanent monitoring of mosquitoes and by acquiring a deeper knowledge about how anthropogenic activities affect vector ecology.

Games of Belonging: Football, Boundaries and Politics between Germany and Turkey

AbstractInternational football is a field for national identity performances in which narratives of national belonging are articulated. Games of belonging capture discourses on and debates over national belonging. Up-and-coming national football team diversity, and its public promotion, was expected to facilitate boundary blurring in the politics of belonging; however, it caused highly contentious debates revolving around the question of who belongs to Germany and Turkey and who does not. For this reason, we ask how (ethnoculturally) diverse national football teams challenge established narratives of national belonging and, thereby, trigger debates over national belonging across time and space. We compared the media discourse on national team diversity in Germany and Turkey with a special focus on players who disrupt conceptions of ethnic and cultural homogeneity, namely Mesut Özil and Nuri Şahin. Our study illustrates that upcoming international football events constitute games of belonging. Actors from the media, football associations, and politics largely demanded unilateral national belonging from the disrupters, Özil and Şahin. Both players’ reactions, however, draw on conceptions of (trans-)national belonging which challenge and conflict with established narratives of (ethno-)national belonging.

Architectures of an “Otherwise”: Inhabiting Displacement

This concept paper aims to destabilize the limits and delineations of conventional architectural thinking by disclosing its ambiguities and contingencies through the centralization of the inhabitation-displacement nexus and, by extension, the figure of the inhabitant. Building upon our January 2019 workshop at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Germany, entitled: Inside Out – Outside In: Shifting Architectures of Refugee Inhabitation, its keynote interventions by Prof. Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi and Prof. Romola Sanyal, together with the vast array of topics and methodologies brought to the table by our presenters, we primarily argue towards the concept of inhabitation as an epistemic shift of both the site and the subject of architectural (knowledge) production. Shifting our focus particularly to the sites and subjects of displacement (i.e., ‘the refugee’/ ‘the migrant’ and beyond) enabled us to centralize the concept of inhabitation as a modality of the architectural spatial production of an otherwise through the prime subject figure of architectural authorship: the inhabitant.

Landscape associations of farmland bird diversity in Germany and Japan

Spatial heterogeneity of landscapes is a key factor for the diversity of biota. There are a rich variety of agricultural landscapes around the globe that differ with respect to composition and spatial configuration of land-use types, reflecting different levels of human impacts. To test whether landscape structure influences biodiversity in similar ways in different geographical regions, our study explored the relationship between landscape characteristics and farmland bird diversity in Germany and Japan. The two countries represent regions with similar Palearctic avifauna, but with contrasting climatic, biogeographical, and socio-economic conditions. We used distribution data for 31 (Germany) and 29 (Japan) species of farmland birds and applied multiple regression analysis to examine the effect of landscape structure on species richness of total farmland birds and of several ecological groups. In both regions, farmland cover was the key variable determining species numbers. Species numbers also increased with increasing proportion of semi-natural habitats up to a maximum and then decreased if semi-natural habitat became more abundant. Optimum landscape structure for each ecological group differed according to their respective habitat needs, but the direction of shifts toward their preferred habitats was similar in both regions, suggesting common ecological mechanisms underlying the patterns of farmland bird diversity. Significant interactions of structural characteristics with the region variable indicated that associations between species richness and landscape structure varied regionally. In Germany, where landscapes are covered by a large extent of farmland, woodland edge density had a pronounced effect on species numbers. By contrast, associations with woodland edges were weak in Japan, where forest is the dominant form of land-use. The differences in landscape associations imply that different conservation strategies should be taken according to the landscape context. In farmland-dominated landscapes, edge habitats provided by forest patches are an important feature for maintaining farmland bird diversity, whereas maintaining open habitats is crucial in forest-dominated landscapes. The importance of maintaining grassland, paddy fields, and semi-natural habitats as part of agricultural landscapes was also underlined by the results of our study. Measures for conserving farmland bird diversity should focus on maintaining heterogeneity of agricultural landscapes.

Health of the offspring of immigrants: the BaBi birth cohort study

Abstract Children with a migration background are more at risk of health-related problems than those without a migration background. The German health system still does not adequately meet the challenges of on increasingly heterogeneous population, not least due to a lack of adequate epidemiological data and models. The BaBi study contributes to gaining new insights in the development of health inequalities due to cultural diversity in Germany, with a focus on pregnancy and early childhood.

Genetic Diversity and Spatial Segregation of Francisella tularensis Subspecies holarctica in Germany.

Francisella tularensis is an intracellular pleomorphic bacterium and the causative agent of tularemia, a zoonotic disease with a wide host range. Among the F. tularensis subspecies, especially F. tularensis subsp. holarctica is of clinical relevance for European countries. The study presented herein focuses namely on genetic diversity and spatial segregation of F. tularensis subsp. holarctica in Germany, as still limited information is available. The investigation is based on the analysis of 34 F. tularensis subsp. holarctica isolates and one draft genome from an outbreak strain. The isolates were cultured from sample material being that of primarily human patients (n = 25) and free-living animals (n = 9). For six of 25 human isolates, epidemiological links between disease onset and tick bites could be established, confirming the importance of arthropod linked transmission of tularemia in Germany. The strains were assigned to three of four major F. tularensis subsp. holarctica clades: B.4, B.6, and B.12. Thereby, B.6 and B.12 clade members were predominantly found; only one human isolate was assigned to clade B.4. Also, it turned out that eight isolates which caused pneumonia in patients clustered into the B.6 clade. Altogether, eight different final subclades were assigned to clade B.6 (biovar I, erythromycin sensitive) and six to B.12 (biovar II, erythromycin resistant) in addition to one new final B.12 subclade. Moreover, for 13 human and 3 animal isolates, final subclade subdivisions were not assigned (B.12 subdivisions B.33 and B.34, and B.6 subdivision B.45) because official nomenclatures are not available yet. This gives credit to the genetic variability of F. tularensis subsp. holarctica strains in Germany. The results clearly point out that the given genetic diversity in Germany seems to be comparably high to that found in other European countries including Scandinavian regions. A spatial segregation of B.6 and B.12 strains was found and statistically confirmed, and B.12 clade members were predominantly found in eastern parts and B.6 members more in western to southern parts of Germany. The portion of B.12 clade members in northeastern parts of Germany was 78.5% and in southwestern parts 1.9%.

State Answers to Religious Diversity in Germany and Singapore: History, Philosophy and Strategy

AbstractThis Article focuses on the extent to which the different legal approaches of Germany and Singapore to religious diversity were shaped by history. It first analyzes the development in Germany and describes four phases of the development of the law on the relationship between church and state. Starting with the consequences of reformation, it shows that—for centuries—the relationship between denominations had been the crucial matter of this body of law. Only later, the law dealt with conflicts between religion and atheism. This Article then presents the fundamental rights approach of the Basic Law and examines it against the backdrop of the historical development and recent challenges. Second, this Article offers a historical account of Singapore’s attempts at regulating and managing religious diversity. It starts with the establishment of a British trading post on the island in 1819 and runs up to the present day. As a result of mass migration in its early years, Singapore was to become, in the twentieth century, one of the most religiously and culturally diverse nations in the world. This Article shows that Singapore has sought to regulate and manage the various religious groups through a combination of legislation and state policy.

Provision of health care services and regional diversity in Germany: insights from a Bayesian health frontier analysis with spatial dependencies.

The German health care system is among the most patient-oriented systems in Europe. Nevertheless, distinct utilisation patterns, access barriers due to socio-economic profiles, and potentials of misallocation of medical resources lead to disparities in the provision of health care services. We analyse how a possible over- and undersupply of services and the utilisation of and the access to the health care system relate to regional variations in the population's well-being. For this purpose, we employ a recent Bayesian stochastic frontier approach that allows for spatial dependence structures. Our results indicate that patient migration plays an important role in contributing to regional differences in the utilisation of the medical infrastructure. As a consequence, policy should take spatial patterns of health care utilisation into account to improve the allocation of medical resources.

The German statistical category “migration background”: Historical roots, revisions and shortcomings

The term “migration background” is commonly used in Germany today, but this neologism is only 20 years old. As an official category, it is even much younger. There has been only little research concerning the new population category, which emerged around the turn of the millennium. Thus, the question how the “migration background” could become the central category describing migration related diversity in Germany is not answered yet. This article fills this gap by exploring the context of the emergence of the “migration background” including the history of ethnic categories in German official statistics. It describes the actual definition of a “migration background” which became an official category in 2007 when the German Federal Statistical Office started publishing data regarding “the population with a migration background” based on the microcensus, a 1% household survey with mandatory participation. The central questions are: how national membership is imagined, how is it inscribed in definitions, and what adaptions had to be made over time? To answer these questions, different sources as questionnaires, publications of results of the microcensus and national reports on children and youth are analysed. Using interpretative methods, it is shown how a new taxonomy of the population in Germany was created, how it was influenced by international and national educational research, and to which extent it reshaped the perspectives on newcomers and natives. It is shown that the new category is tightly bound to citizenship and summarizes a number of older ethnic categories, but excludes also immigrated Germans who immigrated shortly after Second World War and from the former German Democratic Republic. Therefore, the label “migration background” is misleading because inherited citizenship and ancestry is in the centre of the definition rather than migration experience.

Between East and West? East Germany’s Employment System in a Dynamic Comparison

This article investigates how working conditions in East Germany differ from those in West Germany as well as from those among its Central and Eastern European (CEE) neighbors (Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland). Building on repeated International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) survey data (1989, 1997, 2005, and 2015), the author compares key elements of East Germany’s employment system with West Germany and its CEE neighbors over time. The results show that, initially, East Germany’s conditions resembled a logic reflecting the need for economic survival that was distinct from West Germany and from the emerging general patterns of its CEE neighbors. By 2015, East and West German working conditions nearly converge. This article develops and extends the employment system approach to address situations of transformation and substantial institutional change, and contributes to the ongoing debate on regional diversity in Germany’s economy.

New Geographies of Urban Possibility

New Geographies of Urban Possibility

Phylogenetic and molecular analysis of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N8 and H5N5 viruses detected in Poland in 2016-2017.

Sixty-five poultry outbreaks and sixty-eight events in wild birds were reported during the highly pathogenic H5N8/H5N5 avian influenza epidemic in Poland in 2016-2017. The analysis of all gene segment sequences of selected strains revealed cocirculation of at least four different genome configurations (genotypes) generated through reassortment of clade 2.3.4.4 H5N8 viruses detected in Russia and China in mid-2016. The geographical and temporal distribution of three H5N8 genotypes indicates separate introductions. Additionally, an H5N5 virus with a different gene configuration was detected in wild birds. The compilation of the results with those from studies on the virus' diversity in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands revealed that Europe was affected by at least eight different H5N8/H5N5 reassortants. Analysis of the HA gene sequence of a larger subset of samples showed its diversification corresponding to the genotype classification. The close relationship between poultry and wild bird strains from the same locations observed in several cases points to wild birds as the primary source of the outbreaks in poultry.

How Much Veil Is Too Much Veil: On the Constitutionality and Advisability of Face Veil Bans for German Public School Students

With increasing cultural and religious diversity in Germany, a debate has emerged over the extent and limits of religious freedom in day-to-day life. While much controversy arose over whether public school teachers have the right to wear Islamic head coverings, students as private individuals are free to wear a headscarf at school if they wish. Yet, recent school and administrative court decisions suggest that the situation is different for students who wear niqab and Islamic face veils rather than just head veils. This Article contemplates whether niqab-wearing students can be expelled from public school under current German law. In addition, this Article addresses the constitutionality of law reform in this area especially considering the European Court of Human Rights' jurisprudence in the French context. The Article subsequently contemplates the advisability of such law reform while also drawing on the experiences of countries which have already enacted so-called burqa bans. As many countries are currently in the process of considering face veil bans, this Article may have relevance beyond the German context.

Five cases of vector-borne Francisella tularensis holarctica infections in south-western Germany and genetic diversity

Tularemia is a rare zoonotic disease in Germany. Francisella tularensis has been isolated previously from ticks in southern Germany underscoring the importance of ticks (Ixodes ricinus) in tularemia transmission, but there have been only few reports from this region with single cases or small case series of tick-borne transmissions of tularemia. We report five cases of non-game animal associated tularemia diagnosed from 2010 to 2016 in southwestern Germany – Baden-Wuerttemberg. Our case series and molecular typing (MLVA) results add published clinical experience to this underdiagnosed disease and consolidate previous findings regarding tick-borne transmission of tularemia and phylogenetic diversity in Germany.

Landnutzung und biologische Vielfalt in Deutschland – Welchen Beitrag zur Nachhaltigkeit können Großschutzgebiete leisten?

Agriculture and forestry play a central role in preserving biological diversity. In this context, we examined the attributes and present state of sustainability of agriculture and forestry in respect of biological diversity in Germany. Additionally, we asked whether large protected areas can serve as model sites for the integration of land use and conservation or as priority areas for nature conservation. Sustainable land use is a way of managing natural resources to meet present needs without limiting future generations in fulfilling their needs. The main attribute of sustainability is the implementation of a management system that safeguards potential multifunctional use. The indicator systems implemented on the national level in Germany to evaluate sustainability of agriculture and forestry are shown to be incomplete in respect of biological diversity and do not always contain target values. With the different types of large protected areas in Germany different targets are pursued. While national parks exclude agriculture and forestry to a large extent and therefore serve as priority areas for conservation, nature parks and biosphere reserves aim at the integration of land use and nature protection. Large protected areas in Germany do not exhibit a representative spatial distribution. In order to render nature parks and biosphere reserves to model sites for the integration of land use and nature conservation their management needs to be improved considerably and an even more systematic conservation planning should be pursued. In contrast, national parks already reveal that they will fulfill their task as priority sites for nature conservation in the near future.