An executive board member of Germany's federal bank, the Bundesbank, said Thursday he regrets making disparaging remarks about the Arab and Turkish populations in Berlin.
Thilo Sarrazin, who previously served as finance minister for Berlin, came under fire for saying in an interview that Turks and Arabs in the capital are not interested in, and not capable of, integrating into German society.
"I do not need to accept anyone who lives on handouts from a state that it rejects, is not adequately concerned about the education of their children and constantly produces new, little headscarf-clad girls," Sarrazin was quoted as telling Lettre International quarterly magazine in its most recent issue that hit newsstands earlier this week.
"That goes for 70 percent of the Turkish and 90 percent of the Arabic population of Berlin."
On Thursday, Sarrazin issued a statement saying he had not intended to insult anyone.
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"My intent was to clearly describe the perspective and problems facing the city of Berlin, not to discriminate against individual ethnic groups," Sarrazin told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
The Bundesbank issued a statement already Wednesday saying it "decisively distances itself" from Sarrazin's remarks, which "in no way relate to (his) responsibilities at the Bundesbank."
Berlin police have also said they have launched an investigation to determine whether the remarks could be considered as inciting racial hatred.
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Berlin's former Finance Minister Thilo Sarrazin has blasted the German capital for what he regards as too big an "underclass," too many unproductive immigrants and a leftist mentality. His employer, the Bundesbank, has been quick to distance itself from his remarks.
Berlin likes to think of itself as a hip and multicultural sort of place -- full of artists, writers and DJs living on a shoestring while pursuing the creative life. Mayor Klaus Wowereit has even turned the vice of its relative penury and high unemployment into a virtue, famously describing the city as "poor, but sexy."
However, the city's former finance minister, Thilo Sarrazin, has now tried to punch holes in that image, slamming the city's large immigrant population for not being productive enough and blaming Berlin's leftist mentality for holding the German capital back.
Sarrazin's provocative interview with Berlin-based culture magazine Lettre International has provoked his current employers, the Bundesbank, Germany's central bank, to take the unusual step of distancing itself from him.
The former finance minister, who is now a member of the Bundesbank board and works in Frankfurt, had little good to say about his former home. In the interview, he argued that Berlin would "never be saved by the Berliners."
Citing the high jobless rate in the city, he said part of the problem lay in the fact that "40 percent of births were in the underclass," which was causing the standards in schools to decrease instead of increase