Warning: contains (not) banned word

Dear Reader,

Something has happened over the past eight years that I am tempted to put down to the increased level of immigration to Germany. But it could simply be something that would have happened anyway due to the fact that social trends and taboos can spread around the world so easily in the era of social media.

I don’t want to brag. But, in some small way, I may have played a part.

Back in 2015, a few months after I’d started work as an editor at an English-language news site in Berlin, the country got swept up in a debate about how to talk to all these “new Germans” who were arriving as part of the Willkommenskultur.

One politician who struck a wrong note was Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann. The conservative lawmaker said on a TV talk show that one of his favourite singers, schlager star Robert Blanco, “war immer ein wunderbarer Neger”.

It’s difficult to translate a word as historically loaded as white person's description for a black man. But the phrase translates rough…