An Example of a Luengenpresse Episode

The term in German...."luegenpresse".....got pulled out as word of the year in Germany, mostly because some Germans have begun to question the factual nature of reported stories and the various slanted way that stories are told.

This week, I noted a luegenpresse item.

Various communities in Germany are being pressed to find homes, apartments, or structures that can be quickly adapted for use for refugees and immigrants.  Frankly, they don't want to go out and spend a vast amount of funding on requirements like this.  The communities have not been paid back by the state or federal government on a Euro-to-Euro scale.  So most are burning up some funding that would have been used on street or bridge renovation.

Around two or three weeks ago....this story started out in the German press....Schwerte is this town nearby Buchenwald....the old Nazi concentration camp of WW II.  It's up in northwest Germany....near Dortmund.

Schwerte was told to prep up and get some facility (of living standards) for approximately twenty asylum seekers.  There's not a lot of choices.  So they eventually settled on what was an old barracks building in the area.  The location?  Well, it gets to being interesting.  It was an old railway repair compound, which had some association with the German Army in WW II and probably had some concentration workers in the local buildings.  It's right next to the concentration camp...if you were curious.

The local guy in charge of the city department who'd handle excess property reviewed the whole thing prior to the announcement.  It'd been used for various purposes, BUT never for concentration camp prisoners.  At some point after the war, it was used as a hospital building for soldiers wounded.  Later, it was used as a storage building.  And for a decade or two....with significant renovation....it was used as a kindergarten in the local area.

These are all facts.

So, what did you get from the luengenpresse?  The story is slanted to such a degree....that it was a Nazi concentration camp building, and it's horrible that you'd suggest that folks should stay in such a building when they are in the refugee or immigrant status.  Most newspapers carried the luengenpresse statements....heavily emphasizing the terrible thing that the town planners had done.

Frankly, all of the efforts required by towns and states....to handle refugees and immigrants (figure 150,000 a year on average now showing up)....consume man-hours and budgets.  These aren't planned and you have to sit there and make up some sudden budget requirement that didn't exist before.  Finding excess buildings in livable condition in your local area?  You could announce yourself as some state director of asylum folks and go up to some mayor....demanding they find a sixty-person building with heat, water, and suitable for living.  In simple terms, it's a burden and consumes some planning efforts.

What happens in this case?  The political party that runs business in the town has suffered a harsh blow.  This will be talked about and used to condemn the folks involved.  All, in the name of a luengenpresse agenda.