The German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, has dismissed as "grotesque" a call from the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) for foreigners in Germany to adopt a German Leitkultur or "guiding culture" in place of their own.
During a recent debate on German immigration policy, Mr Friedrich Merz, parliamentary leader of the CDU, caused controversy by calling for more controlled immigration. But it is his use of the term Leitkultur that has provoked heated debate over the nature of German culture and the consequences of claiming one "leading" culture to be superior to others.
"People who think they can solve problems that exist with immigration [in this way] are behaving like hicks," said Mr Schroder yesterday.
The federal government in Berlin says the term has "cultural supremacy overtones" and is "menacing to immigrants".
The Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, has accused the CDU of "cultivating a racist, anti-immigrant image" to win back popularity lost following a political fund-raising scandal implicating Dr Helmut Kohl.
The CDU denies it has adopted racist or anti-immigrant policies to win back voters, instead saying it has broken one of the longest-held taboos in German society, an opinion shared by the conservative media.
"Whole generations of Germans have been affected by the unshakeable belief that after Auschwitz there can be nothing specifically `German'," said the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in an editorial, welcoming the debate started by Mr Merz.
Regardless of the cultural taboos, the CDU has successfully brought the immigration question on to the political agenda and has found an election issue.
Opinion polls show that immigration has become one of the electorate's main concerns as the number of foreigners has risen sharply in the past decade from four to seven million.
The government says the CDU is playing with fire by trying to win votes by playing on the fears of Germans regarding immigration.
Of particular worry to Germans is the fear that the planned expansion of the EU will see an influx of cheap labour from Poland and the Czech Republic.
Industry chiefs are not altogether happy with the CDU debate either, saying that it ignores one important fact. "Germany needs a minimum of 200,000 immigrants per year just to keep industry going," said Mr Klaus Zimmermann, president of the Institute for Business Research.
