Cinderella Wears a Hijab

Neighborhood Cultures or Producing Culture

Quarters like Nordbahnhof are central to contemporary German urban cultures. The lack of understanding of such sites of intense cultural negotiation, and the overall lack of meaningful everyday interaction, and familiarity between (pious) Muslims and non-Muslims constitute serious impediments to the recognition of Muslims and their religiosities as crucial urban actors. It is not that Muslims are unwilling to “integrate,” but that dominant society is unable and unwilling to recognize the multiethnic and multireligious society in which they are living. The continued insistence on German “ways” and “values” indicates dominant society’s resistance to understand the reality of globalized cityscapes. Meaningful coexistence and participation require compromises where urban constituencies consider the needs of all involved. ⁶ Tariq Modood (2007) calls this process a “multilogue” (p. 65).

Although national political efforts (e.g., the official German Islam Conference) are critical platforms of debate, much of the work of creating egalitarian spaces of participation and cultural production is done in local contexts such as schools, work places, civic associations, streets, and stores. New practices are negotiated by diverse populations and tested in small contexts. Much can be learned from small spaces in multiethnic working-class neighborhoods about cultural negotiation. German society often appeals to minorities and newcomers to pay respect and adapt to existing cultural contexts. ⁷ This perspective misses the point of culture as a dynamic field that constantly remakes itself to accommodate different groups and interests, and that reflects local and global transformations (Isin, 2000). It misses the everyday lives and footsteps of ordinary people as shapers of spaces and producers of cultures (Bayat, 2009; De Certeau, 1988; Holston, 2008; Lefebvre, 1991).

Sharon Zukin (2010) illustrates how today’s beginnings are the groundwork for tomorrow’s cultural transformations, new forms, and practices. Today’s cultural production in urban working class/migrant quarters constitutes tomorrow’s urban authenticity, in particular in the face of corporate homogenization, gentrification, and consumer cultures that dominate contemporary cities. Birgit Mattausch and Erol Yildiz (2008) argue that urban working class/migrant quarters have long constituted the cultural wealth of German (and other) cities (see also Schiffauer, 1997). In an era of global homogenization of downtown areas and the creation of “nonplace” consumer arenas, transportation hubs, and leisure spaces (Augé, 1995), cultural production and innovation as rooted in multiethnic urban quarters are central to urban futures (Chappell, 2010; Sassen, 2000). Neighborhoods and small urban spaces constitute the increasingly rare creative expressions of local culture in the face of globalized spaces and consumer cultures (Zukin, 2010). Zukin (2010) insists that to participate in local cultural production is a right. New beginnings are an urban necessity. She explains,

Authentic is a social right, it’s also poor, ethnic and democratic. Authenticity speaks for the right of a city, and a neighborhood, to offer residents, workers, store owners and street vendors the opportunity to put down roots—to represent, paradoxically both origins and new beginnings. (p. 26)

This includes the rights of different groups to continue their religious traditions and create local beginnings for this tradition. In the process they become, and in the case of Islam in German, already have become, integral parts of urban cultures.

Inner-city multiethnic working-class neighborhoods are frequently depicted as problematic spaces (sozialer Brennpunkt). ⁸ Although these quarters harbor problems that reflect social, educational, and employment inequalities, they also include dynamic and creative cultural potential. Scholars of urban cultures insist on the creative contributions of migrant/multiethnic quarters (Gans, 1962; Katznelson, 1982; Lin, 1998; Zukin, 2010). Ira Katznelson (1982) aptly noted that “their neighborhoods are theirs alone” (p. 1), as elites and municipal budgets do not invest vast sums in their cultural activities. Neither are they deemed central for urban cultural representations. Zukin (1995) demonstrates that away from downtown, in neighborhoods and on neighborhood shopping streets, individual and communal identities have been negotiated by successive generations of new arrivals. Urban cultures are continuously remade, one step and one small conversation at a time. On streets and public spaces, migrant residents engage in the task of becoming local, constructing local identities and formulating new cultural forms. They produce the foundations of future urban authenticities. ⁹ Zukin identifies shopping streets in multiethnic quarters as both lifelines and central stages of local public cultures and cultural production. The analysis of “ethnic shopping streets” needs to be supplemented by an examination of public or semipublic spaces such as schools, cultural centers, or work places as central spaces for cultural negotiation and production.

Nordbahnhof

Blocks of red brick apartment buildings constructed by the railroad administration in the closing years of the 19th century form the core of this inner-city neighborhood. The quarter also includes apartment blocks that were built for postal workers in early 1930s and some privately owned residential buildings. A city train connects the quarter to downtown. The neighborhood has a school (Park School), an intercultural community center (Kulturhaus), a Protestant church (united with three other communities for lack of members), a vocational school that serves students from the city and the region, a new day care and after school facility, and Protestant and Catholic preschools. A Catholic church and a mosque are within about 20 minute walking distance, but beyond the immediate confines of the neighborhood.

From its inception, Nordbahnhof was a migrant neighborhood as newly recruited railroad workers settled there (Kurz, 2005). Early 20th-century migrants to Nordbahnhof were of regional and national origin. Many were Catholics from economically disadvantaged southern parts of the state (Oberschwaben), or a similarly poor region about 60 miles northeast of Stuttgart (Hohenlohe). After World War II, tens of thousands ethnic German war refugees and refugees from Soviet-occupied East Germany arrived in Stuttgart. In the early 1950s, pressed for labor, the railroad and postal administrations brought in workers from Bavaria. Starting from the mid-1950s, Germany contracted workers from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, and Yugoslavia. Whether for Catholics from Hohenlohe, Catholics from Portugal, or Muslims from Turkey, for more than 100 years Nordbahnhof has been a place of entry to Stuttgart. Decades ago Catholic Stuttgarters grew up in Nordbahnhof, when many people thought that “real” Stuttgarters had to be Protestants (Köhler, 1990). Protestant–Catholic marriages, which in the early 20th century were often considered family disasters, are no longer a topic of conversation. Today there are numerous intercultural and interreligious families in the neighborhood. ¹⁰ Although parent generations often remained tied to their home regions, their children developed new identities. One man who was born in the neighborhood in 1940, but whose parents were from Hohenlohe, noted that parents might remain tied to their origins, “but we were Stuttgarters.” A man, whose parents had migrated from Turkey and who grew up in another working class neighborhood in Stuttgart in the 1970s, used almost identical words to describe his identity: “I am a Stuttgarter.” In the past the children of migrants turned into Catholic Stuttgarters of Hohenlohe descent, today they become Muslim Stuttgarters of Turkish, Afghan, or Bosnian descent. ¹¹ In Nordbahnhof, Muslim Stuttgarters are an undisputed fact of life. They are not yet an established “normality” in the city at large, but are becoming one.

In the early 1990s, the railroad administration turned its apartment buildings into regular rentals and residents with other jobs and employers moved in. ¹² Individuals of German descent from the former Soviet Union; war refugees from Bosnia, Macedonia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and migrants from Eastern European and East Germany (the former GDR) moved to the neighborhood in growing numbers. At the dawn of the 21st century, Nordbahnhof accommodates many nationalities and ethnicities: Turkish, Turkish-Kurdish, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Bosnian, Iraqi-Kurdish, Iraqi, Iranian, Czech, Hungarian, Serbian, Russian, Croatian, Sinti, Macedonian, Afghan, Egyptian, Ghanaian, Nigerian, Kenyan, Cameroonian, Tunisian, Moroccan, Palestinian, Algerian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Somali, US-American, Venezuelan, and others reside in the quarter. In local cultural interactions, everybody, regardless of citizenship, has a cultural identity that is based on descent and self-identification. For example, in school, children are aware of their peers’ cultural identities. Although many residents have German citizenship, this does not centrally affect their local cultural identity. The majority of (the local minority) ethnic German residents are railroad retirees who have lived here for decades. There are only few younger ethnic German families with children in the neighborhood as most (middle class) Germans are wary of living in a migrant quarter and even more so of sending their children to a lower class/migrant school.

Religion in the Neighborhood

One cannot understand religious lifeworlds exclusively from the perspective of houses of worship, religious communities, and individual religiosities. Although mosques are often at the center of public debates about Islam, they are not the only places where (pious) Muslim lives unfold. Similarly, “Muslims” are not a monolithic group, but include atheists, nonpracticing Muslims, cultural Muslims, high-holiday Muslims, religious individuals who do not attend mosques, occasional mosque goers, actively involved mosque goers, and participants. There are individuals who dedicate considerable time and effort to their individual religiosity or the welfare of their mosque community (Jonker, 2002; Schiffauer, 2000, 2010). Individual attitudes toward Islam are shaped by various elements, including political experiences (e.g., Iranians), ongoing political conflicts (Turks vs. Kurds), religious interpretations or trajectories (Turkish Sunnis vs. Turkish Alevis), specific historical national developments and differences (Turks or Bosnians), or specific individual experiences (German converts or Muslim reverts). Current and local attitudes toward Islam are mediated by politics (some Kurds from Turkey are wary of some Turkish mosques; some individuals are wary of mosques that are under watch by German state security) and ethnic issues (Arab vs. Turkish mosques). Such difference rarely play out in mosques, as Stuttgart’s two dozen mosques allow for their visitors to associate according to their ethnic identities, political fault lines, and religious preferences. In the neighborhood no such separations exist.

Religiosities play central roles in the lives of many individuals. Individuals might be known to their friends and neighbors as harboring specific beliefs, but these do not transpire in all every day encounters. In some contexts ethnicity plays a more decisive role than religiosity. Obviously, Islam/religiosity cannot be taken as an independent category. Instead, it is often tied to nationalities and ethnicities such as Turkish, Kurdish, Bosnian, or Iraqi. At one moment individuals perceive of themselves as Turkish, while in the next encounter their Muslim identities are foregrounded. Cultural negotiations about the role of Islam/Muslims in the neighborhood are thus complexly interwoven with ethnic diversity. Since there is no mosque in Nordbahnhof, individuals’ religious participation is not immediately apparent to neighbors. In addition to diverse religiosities and worldviews, there are class, gender, age, and educational differences that shape everyday lives. This mundane fact often disappears in public debates that single-handedly focus on mosques as the Muslim spaces and Islam as the guiding principle in Muslims’ lives. Debates about parallel societies (Parallelgesellschaften) invoke images of ill-defined Turkish or Muslim populations who live among themselves, frequent only their own spaces, only have contacts among themselves, think very much alike, and live at a distance to the dominant society. ¹³ Such isolated cultural enclaves do not exist. ¹⁴

Muslims account for about a third of Nordbahnhof’s population. There is no official count, but a few indicators are helpful. In 2007, of almost 60 first graders just under half were Muslims. Almost half of the population of the larger quarter (44.3%) is listed as either without religion or with a religion other than Protestant or Catholic (Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, 2006). Although it is difficult to sort out those without religious affiliation and those who are Muslims, this figure is higher than in wealthier quarters (e.g., Degerloch 36.5%; Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, 2006). ¹⁵ The Muslim presence in Nordbahnhof is attested to by features like the larger selection of non–pork meat products on local supermarkets shelves, the elderly men who sit in front of empty tables during Ramadan in local cafés, and most stereotypically by the number of women who wear headscarves. I will now turn to three contexts where individuals interacted and created new practices in neighborhood spaces.

Swimming Lessons

Whether or not Muslim girls should attend swimming lessons in public schools is a controversial topic of public debate (Ewing, 2008; Schiffauer, 2010). Often articulated as a strictly either/or matter, shades and possibilities in between are overlooked. The following example illustrates how with close interaction a solution, even to this tricky question, was found.

The Park’s School’s administration and the school system at large prescribe that swimming should be taught in school. Ms. Bauer, the school’s principal, noted that “swimming can be a life-saving skill and therefore is important for everybody and needs to be taught.” On the other side stand pious Muslim sentiments about the integrity of the body and religious rules that prohibit displaying one’s body in front of members of the opposite gender. The concrete task at hand is not to show that either side is right or wrong. The challenge is to find ways to accommodate both. In a conversation about swimming lessons, Ms. Bauer explained that swimming is usually in the curriculum for sixth or seventh graders. ¹⁶ At this point, around puberty, it is unacceptable for many Muslims to have their daughters (and indeed also their sons) attend swimming lessons. Understanding these sensibilities, Ms. Bauer noted that the school decided to move the swimming lessons to Grade 3 when children were still young enough to swim in sight of the opposite gender in a public pool. ¹⁷ For most parents this was an acceptable compromise and they sent their children to swimming lessons. Some pious parents, who agreed with the general idea of swimming as a necessary skill, decided to have their girls swim in outfits that covered their shoulder and knees. With the availability of various commercial swimming outfits, it was no problem for savvy parents to find appropriate outfits that covered girls’ bodies but did become either see-through or too heavy in the water. Nobody objected to these outfits. The school appreciated these efforts. Only a very small number of parents objected to swimming lessons altogether. Yet they did not voice this out loud. A girl might simply not show up for swimming or for some weeks pretend to be sick just on the day of swimming lessons. These cases remained rare over the years. Teachers and the principal try to speak with parents and devise compromises to assure that a girl can learn how to swim.

Recently an Afghan family was dragging their feet and kept not sending their daughter without saying that they were opposed to the lessons. Most Afghans in the neighborhood are recent arrivals in Germany and are rather unfamiliar with the local social and cultural contexts. Afghan parents have not—unlike other ethnic groups—yet in large numbers started to participate in school and neighborhood activities. They have little experience in civic participation and tend to voice their disagreement with withdrawal instead of discussion. ¹⁸ The girl, mentioned above, started to “coincidentally” miss swimming or “forget” her swim stuff. On being contacted, the family responded that they would produce the stuff and send the girl to swimming lessons soon. This back and forth could have gone on for a few more weeks, had not Ms. Bauer decided that the school was losing valuable time. She contacted Lale Öztürk ¹⁹ and Ulrike Maier-Mahmoudi who were parent representatives for third grades. They had been representatives since the beginning for their daughters’ class and had participated in many school activities. Both are pious Muslimas. Their daughters attended swimming lessons and wore tight knee length swim shorts and short sleeved swim shirts. Ms. Bauer consulted with Ms. Öztürk and Ms. Maier-Mahmoudi about where they purchased their daughter outfits and whether there was any possibility to acquire such an outfit for the girl who had been avoiding swimming lessons. It turned out that Ms. Öztürk still has a long-sleeved swimming top with a hood (bought in Turkey) at home which she then donated to the school. Ms. Öztürk went to purchase (long) swim pants from a local department store for which Ms. Bauer used funds that has been donated to the school. After the combined efforts of the three women, the father in question continued to make excuses for his daughter “coincidentally” missing swimming lessons. Regardless of this disappointment, Ms. Bauer kept the swimming outfit, which soon found other users. The outfit is now school property that girls can borrow. Once their swimming lessons are over, they are supposed to return the washed outfit to the school, which can then give it to the next girl. ²⁰

Celebrating Together

The months of June and July in Stuttgart and the surrounding state are marked by numerous summer festivals organized by local communities, clubs, and associations. In Nordbahnhof in some years, the Park School’s International Summer Festival, the small street fair (Hocketse) of the northern half of the community, the “Radish Celebration” (Rettichfest) of an urban garden colony at the southwestern fringes of the community, and the International Neighborhood Festival of the cultural center (Kulturhaus) fall on four consecutive weekends.

The International Neighborhood Festival organized by the Kulturhaus is the largest of these events. On a Saturday in late June or early July, the center’s soccer and playing field (Bolzplatz) is covered with tables and benches. On the southern end there is the stage. On the northern end and in the yard between the buildings, there are food stalls run by the ethnic and neighborhood associations that regularly meet at the center. In 2007, a Turkish dance group offered popcorn and waffles, a Portuguese folklore group barbecued fish and sold cakes and coffee. The small gardeners’ association offered sausages (Rote Wurst), French fries, soft drinks, and beer. A Turkish classical music band provided Turkish appetizers, stuffed pita bread, and tea. An Italian group baked pizza. The afternoon officially started with the performances of folklore and music groups. First, a Portuguese fanfare group marched into the yard with rhythmic loud drumming. The benches were crowded with people of different backgrounds. There were national, ethnic, or age clusters. The northwestern corner was ethnic German and older, so were the few rows of tables next to the stall of the gardeners’ association. There were clusters of Turkish women who wore headscarves, other cluster of women without headscarves, and a few smaller ones that include both. There were Italian and Portuguese clusters, and ethnically mixed ones. Next to me were three women in their 40s in headscarves sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. Closer to the stage, I noted the elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Aydin, who preside over a well-established large local Kurdish family. Two of their young grandchildren were with them and crawled over and under benches and tables. One table to their right was an elderly German couple, Mr. and Mrs. Haller, with beer glasses in front of them. They did not sit in the German retiree block, but in the middle of the younger and multiethnic section closer to the stage. A little further were the thoroughly multiethnic tables of teenagers. No ethnic or age group dominated this festival. This festival with its long history in the neighborhood and appeal to diverse residents constitutes one among many sites of interethnic interaction. Some individuals have long ago embraced the multiethnic and multireligious local ethos, others are still learning. As I walked through the gate of the Kulturhaus onto it yard space, I heard a voice right behind me in the crowd. An elderly male mumbled under his breath to his wife: “But there are only Turks here.” The sentence was not an angry one, but uttered with a sense of slight disappointment. This man’s impression of the event’s ethnic composition, however, did not make him turn around and leave. I did not hear the rest of the conversation between him and his wife, but I watched them walk in and sit down at a table. As I checked later he was still there and enjoyed the festival and food. This man’s remark indicated that the festival might have been less than perfect for him when he arrived. Regardless, he stayed and settled into the multiethnic crowd.

Sometime later, the performance of a Turkish folklore group pulled members of the audience in, some joined the dancers. Little girls danced in front of the performers. People clapped. The Portuguese dance groups and the Spanish dance group that followed also moved the audience with their rhythms. Later the Portuguese Fanfare group that had opened the event marched in a second time with their drumming routine. Around 7 p.m., people started to leave. The remaining audience, well-fed and entertained, sat happily together. They seemed like the picture-perfect image of Stuttgart’s multiethnic cultural present and future. By about 8:30 p.m., it was still light out on this summer day, a Turkish pop band started to play. Some younger girls danced in front of the stage. Soon the band only made their announcements in Turkish. I noticed that the middle-aged women with the headscarves had left too. At this hour the event had become a teenager party where dancing mattered most and words were secondary for the multiethnic dancers. Whether the music was announced in Turkish, Italian, or German made little difference to them, so long as it played danceable rhythms.

Our Mosque

Zuffenhausen is another multiethnic and multireligious Stuttgart neighborhood. A former agricultural region, Zuffenhausen rapidly industrialized in the late 19th century and turned into a working-class urban quarter by the early 20th century. Like Nordbahnhof, Zuffenhausen absorbed successive waves of regional, national, and international labor migrants and refugees. Today Zuffenhausen is among the quarters with the highest percentages of residents with backgrounds of migration. In the early 1990s, a mosque association bought a building from a Christian community that closed because of dwindling membership. The renovated building became the Hussein Mosque. Located in a residential area, this mosque is an oddity among Stuttgart’s mosques, which are mostly located in distant and isolated industrial quarters (Kuppinger, 2010, 2011). Largely due to the exceptional effort of this mosque association’s President, Mr. Serdar, and his close cooperation with local administrative council (Bezirksrat) and its head (Bezirksvorsteher), the Hussein Mosque has turned into a respected local institution.

In recent years, the mosque community participated in many public events. In 2007, the community marched for the first time in a local parade on the occasion of a neighborhood summer festival. Between tens of other floats and groups, like sport and music clubs, the Red Cross, voluntary fire fighters, churches, schools and preschools, ethnic associations, car lovers, and mountain hikers’ associations, about 20 community members marched under a large banner. On the fair ground, the mosque had a stall where they sold kebab, French fries, Turkish sweets, and soft drinks. Men cooked and sold food in a large front tent, and women worked in a smaller back tent (separated from the front by a Turkish flag). The Hussein Mosque’s stall was squeezed between others that sold German sausages and Greek gyros; neighboring stalls offered beer, wine, soft drinks, or coffee. Working a stall next to one that sells pork and alcohol constitutes a compromise that not all pious Muslims are ready to make. I visited the stall shortly after the parade had ended. Mr. Serdar and his fellow workers could barely keep up with the demand for kebab and French fries. Their stall was a huge success.

Much like local churches, the Hussein Mosque turned into “our mosque,” an institution that participates in activities and is included in local affairs and events. In 2010/2011 the mosque and the Protestant Church organized an ambitious year-long program with the title “To Approach One Another” (Aufeinander zugehen). The program consisted of 33 events, discussions, and performances using church, mosque, and other communal venues. Events included lectures about “Humor in Islam,” “Abraham—The father of three world religions,” or “Integration—What is meant by this?” There were musical events, a visit by primary school children to the mosque, and a women’s breakfast. At one event, held at the Hussein Mosque, a member of the mosque association’s regional board, Mr. Demir, talked about “How we live our beliefs—tradition, feasts/holidays and customs in Islam” to a largely non-Muslim audience. He gave an overview of Muslim holidays, their contexts, and practices. He explained how particular holidays were celebrated, how he and his family combined religious aspects and family issues. He related how he and his wife dealt with the fact that their children learned about Christmas at school, and how they taught them their traditions. Mr. Demir kept his lectures at a personal level, which was greatly appreciated by the audience. After the presentation, there were many questions. For example, people were interested in how he arranged to pray at work. He explained that he tried to take his short breaks for prayers (others went outside to smoke) and that he often prayed in a conference room that was rarely used. Mr. Demir explained that he participated in numerous activities but stayed true to his beliefs. For instance, when he was younger he would go out with friends. They drank alcohol, he did not. He smiled and added “that was a good thing for them, because that way they always had somebody who could drive.” At barbecues his friends know that he brings his own meat. Things have always been smooth for him. He concluded that “it is important to talk about things, so that everybody knows about them.” Some things remained alien to the audience (why does one prayer at one occasion “count” for more than the other?), but the question and answer session was a success as the speaker had created an open atmosphere that allowed the audience to asked mundane, yet important questions about everyday Muslim lives.

Every year sometime in the late spring, the Hussein Mosque organizes a kermes (social event with fundraising) in its front yard. The community offers food, handicraft, and social mingling for members, neighbors, invited guest, and whoever else wants to visit the mosque, enjoy food and company. For years the event has been well attended and is sometimes covered in the local press. The success of the Hussein Mosque as “the” local mosque is rooted in circumstances like the favorable location in the middle of a residential neighborhood, exceptional engagement of its president, close cooperation between the president and the head of the local council, and crucially the willingness of different constituencies to work together as partners.

Footsteps

Timing of swimming lessons, the use of particular swim suits, multiethnic and intergenerational neighborhood celebrations, or interreligious dialogue: these moments and spaces of cultural encounter and ensuing minute cultural transformations are paramount in the construction of multiethnic and multireligious cultures. These innovations designed by individuals, and the footsteps taken by groups remake the communities they collectively inhabit. With time these innovations become normalized and can spillover to other urban contexts as models to imitate. They are slowly woven into the fabric of urban lifeworlds. Some aspects become known as, for example, Muslim practices that need to be respected and honored, or some become more generalized local practices. The fact that pious Muslims do not consume alcohol or pork not only enters popular knowledge, but more importantly becomes one guiding principle for local practices.

When I talked to an elderly man at the street fair of the northern part of the neighborhood about the relative absence of in particular Turkish neighbors, he noted, “I don’t quite understand this, as we made sure that we have beef dishes, coffee, and soft drinks for them.” This statement indicates that this man/the organizers saw the absence of their Turkish/Muslim neighbors as a void. They had made sure to address Muslims’ dietary requirements. The organizers’ attention to Muslim needs indicates that (unlike in many other German contexts), Turkish and/or Muslim residents are important local partner. Indeed, this man bemoaned their absence. Sitting together at the kermes/fundraising barbecue in the Hussein Mosque’s front yard brought neighbors together in a similar manner; this time with Muslims being the hosts. With the format of a summer/weekend barbecue in the local summer festival season, the mosque community picked a genre that all constituencies were familiar with.

The International Festival at the Kulturhaus provides a glimpse at a slightly different context of cultural encounters. Less focused on interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims, here a complex mix of ethnic interactions is central. Diverse residents of the neighborhood enjoy each other’s cultural performances, food, and company. Islam and Muslim lifeworlds, however, are woven into this cultural complexity. The food stall of the (more secularly minded Turkish folklore group) served neither alcohol nor pork. Other stalls also included non–pork options. The presence of a considerable number of women with headscarves marked the existence of local pious lifeworlds. These women and their less visible (pious) spouses and children saw no contradiction between their religiosity and being at this festival. In fact, the festival and other activities at the Kulturhaus are integral parts of local pious lifeworlds. Headscarves and other more visible Muslim practices in turn are integral parts of the neighborhood.

Conclusions

In neighborhoods like Nordbahnhof and Zuffenhausen, Islam and Muslim practices are established elements of local cultures. It is impossible to live in the neighborhood and miss Ramadan. It is taken for granted that the week-long day-camp for the Park School’s third graders includes a non–pork lunch option. The localization of Muslim practices is an ongoing process, as new issues and details are debated (e.g., how many days should students take off for Muslim feasts?). In the everyday friction, but also excitement of such negotiations, new forms and compromises constantly emerge (the “secular” iftar at the Kulturhaus) that slowly enter the neighborhood social imaginaries and henceforth guide the practices of, in particular younger, individuals. Practices become normalized and are no longer noteworthy for local residents. Not all residents directly participate in cultural negotiations, nor do all residents share in all compromises. Yet there is a broader neighborhood ethos that for many constitutes the foundation of the sentimental attachment and pride they harbor for the neighborhood. The man who briefly “complained” about the presence of too many Turks, at the International Festival, can be understood as being involved in his own negotiations, when regardless of his remark he attended the festivities. He allowed the festival atmosphere to possibly convince him that this diversity worked well for everybody.

Living in close proximity with each other and engaging with neighbors results in personal ties and cultural understandings that are of fundamental importance for urban futures. Mr. Haller, the elderly man who had been sitting with his wife among the multicultural younger crowd at the festival, remarked, in a different context, about the neighbors in his building: “the neighbors from Pakistan always greet us very politely, some of the younger Germans don’t.” Some of his migrant neighbors even occasionally brought over a piece of cake, he added. Mr. Haller, himself is a labor migrant of a previous generation (he came from Hohenlohe after World War II), and his wife have been living in the neighborhood for more than 40 years. They noted that over the years, they have largely kept to themselves, yet they participated in the neighborhood’s transformations. They drank their beer at ease in the middle of a multiethnic and multireligious crowd. They appreciated the politeness of their Pakistani/Muslim neighbors and harbored no fear of Islam or Muslims in their everyday lives.

The experiences and cultural negotiations of Mr. and Mrs. Haller, Mr. Serdar, Ms. Bauer, Ms. Öztürk, Ms. Maier-Mahmoudi, Mr. Demir, and others are central ingredients of present and future urban cultures. Framed by institutions such as schools, cultural centers, mosques, churches, and individual encounters in streets, playgrounds, and homes, instances of cultural dialogue/multilogue are rarely recognized as valuable contributions to German cities. The neglect of the cultural dynamics of working class/migrant quarters is not new. Since the 19th century, migrants to the industrializing cities of Europe and the United States have been demonized and accused of undermining established (bourgeois) urban cultures. Rarely were their cultural potentials and work recognized or appreciated. Examining quarters like Nordbahnhof or Zuffenhausen it becomes apparent that their residents engage in daily labors of cultural negotiation. As the media debate ideologically charged topics like honor killings and forced marriage, individuals in working-class/migrant quarters expand their energy in finding practical and respectful solutions to issues that are meaningful to themselves, their neighbors, and quarters. Individuals interact in the neighborhood on a dramatically more equal basis than they could on urban, let alone national platforms. The wealth of cultural work and resources available in Nordbahnhof is an overlooked and untapped resource in the making of more egalitarian urban cultures. The current emphasis on the national (middle-class and ethnic German) public sphere as a space for cultural and religious negotiations neglects the strength and long experience of working-class/migrant quarters in the creation of urban cultures and identities. Much can be learned from these quarters.