The first Allianz Lecture of the series took place on January 14 in front of a sold-out audience, and this event was no different, with dozens of eager listeners flooding into Munich's Residenz Theater last Sunday. The title of the event, "The changing face of Europe," Migration and the integration of immigrants, attracted a great deal of interest from foreign nationals.

There was a definite international presence on the podium, too, with German Minister of State Maria Böhmer, social anthropologist Werner Schiffauer, author and pop singer Senait Mehari from Eritrea, Russian author Lena Gorelik and imam to the Islamic community of Penzberg Benjamin Idriz passionately debating the issues. Cathrin Kahlweit of the Süddeutsche Zeitung was moderator for the session.

Maria Böhmer began her presentation by making it abundantly clear that immigration is no longer a minority issue, as Germany is now home to 15 million people from immigrant backgrounds. What Böhmer finds alarming, however, is the fact that 40 percent of young people from immigrant families have no vocational qualifications whatsoever. "We are wasting a huge amount of potential," she lamented.

She also highlighted the problematic fact that while fewer and fewer highly skilled immigrants are entering the country, more and more highly skilled Germans are leaving. In contrast to countries such as the USA, Germany has not managed to attract highly skilled foreign nationals, she continued. Böhmer identified three key areas where change is necessary. Firstly, educational opportunities must be developed, secondly, immigrants must be given more help in gaining work and their working conditions improved, and thirdly a mutual acceptance of values must be achieved through dialog and exchange.

She drew attention to the efforts of the German government, citing the example of the "Integration summit" organized by the government last year, and urged every individual to do their bit: "Politicians and the state can't do it all alone, to achieve integration we need allies – employers, trade unions, employee councils, the media and the commitment of society as a whole," she insisted.

Senait Mehari disagreed with this position, passionately explaining her belief that for the integration process to succeed, immigrants themselves must want to be integrated. "I assimilated because it is important to me to be a part of society. 90 percent of the foreigners I know stick together as a group. That's never going to work if they don't mix with the rest of society."

However, the other podium speakers were quick to voice differing opinions. Werner Schiffauer, Professor for Comparative Cultural and Social Anthropology at the Viadrina European University in Frankfurt (Oder), insisted that, "Integration will fail if we just leave it up to each individual to decide how to integrate themselves." And young Russian author Lena Gorelik also disagreed with Mehari, saying, "If you are not welcome, you won't be integrated into society, however much you may want to be."

According to Benjamin Idriz, imam to the Islamic community of Penzberg, "What counts is whether the society is willing to accept foreigners, not the state." All are welcome in his community, he continued. Penzberg believes in modern Islam. He wants to "establish Euro-Islam as a form of Islam acceptable to the majority of society." And for this reason, his Penzberg mosque regularly plays host to a large number of non-Muslims.

The animated and heated discussion showed how complicated the issue of integration is, and how much more discussion is still needed. There simply cannot be just one answer.