I found this sign on a store window downright hilarious.
It reads:
The Bild und Sarrazin are right:
Germans are getting dumber and dumber.
This trend must be stopped.
Therefore, the Bild "newspaper" will no longer
be sold in this shop.
The
Bild ("
Picture") is a tabloid rag similar to our
Star or
National Enquirer; it features huge screaming headlines with lots of exclamation points and more pictures than text. (It's easy for non-native speakers like me to read.) Thilo Sarrazin is the former chairman of the German Federal Bank. At the moment he is wildly popular in Germany, having created a huge uproar with the release of his 2010 book
Deutschland schafft sich ab (
Germany is Destroying Itself), which advocates, among other things, a stricter immigration policy and deplores the strain the Muslim religion places on the welfare system.
Ironically, Sarrazin himself is the descendent of immigrant French Huguenots and his last name itself means "Saracen," which roughly translates to "Muslim."