About 300,000 Germans call the UK home and many work in highly skilled jobs. But some say their foreignness is now an issue

Nicole Janz has lived in the UK since 2009. She completed a PhD at Cambridge, got married and had a daughter before settling in the city and becoming an assistant professor at Nottingham University. Janz and her husband are among the 300,000 Germans living in the UK, a fact they have become acutely aware of since 23 June.

Janz recalls an incident at a local pub after the Brexit vote that reminded her that her accent marks her out from the crowd.

After ordering a beer, the barmaid told her off for failing to acknowledge traditional English pleasantries. She was bluntly told: “We say please and thank you here in Great Britain.” For Janz it was indicative of a changed atmosphere after the referendum. “Maybe I didn’t order in the most friendly way, but things like this never ever happened to me before,” she recalls. “I am more often reminded of the fact that I am a foreigner.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nicole Janz and her family. ‘I’m more often reminded of the fact I’m a foreigner.’ Photograph: Family Handout

Germans are one of the top 10 groups of migrants in the UK – behind the Irish and ahead of Americans. For many who settled in Britain long before the campaign to leave the EU gathered steam, the result of the vote feels like a personal slight against Europeans.

“They feel kind of insulted,” says Ulrich Storck, head of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in London, an institution linked to the Social Democratic party (SPD) in Germany. “Those people have strived to get closer to the British for decades and now feel rejected.”

Renate Dietrich-Karger, a German who has lived six months of the year at her Scottish home for the last three decades, agrees. “It felt as if a close relative had died,” she says. “Jewish relatives of mine fled to the UK to escape the Nazis. I came to the UK for the first time in 1965 and at that time it was to me the land of hope and glory. But a lot has changed since then and I am increasingly worried by the willingness to hate people from a different background and to express this openly.”

In Scotland, which voted overwhelmingly to remain, the SNP has attempted to reach out to EU leaders directly, circumventing Downing Street and reminding Europeans they have an ally north of the English border.

“German tourists are a very important group for the Scottish tourist sector,” Angus Robertson, deputy leader of the SNP says. The MP, whose mother is German, is friendly with German politicians such as David McAllister, a former state premier from Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party (CDU), and is determined to fight for Scotland to remain in the EU.

Labour’s Gisela Stuart, who is also German, was a leading campaigner for Brexit, arguing Britain needed to “take back control” of immigration, trade, taxation and justice.

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Her own status as a European immigrant propelled her into the limelight in the run-up to the vote. But while it was used as an asset by Vote Leave before 23 June, it has since made her a target.

Stuart claims she has been called a traitor by EU supporters in the UK and abroad. “I never received abuse in the United Kingdom for being German,” she says, “but I now receive it from Germany by people who tell me it’s in pursuit of being good Europeans.”

Meanwhile, neither remainers nor leavers have been able to offer assurances on how Brexit will affect Europeans already living in the UK, or those arriving after the estimated leave date in 2019.

Many Germans who have come to Britain in the last 20 years are highly skilled and trained. More than 5,000 teach and research at British universities, making them the biggest group of overseas academics in the UK. An additional 3,000 Germans work as doctors and medical staff in the NHS.

Oliver Cramer, deputy medical director at the Isle of Wight NHS trust, is one of them. Cramer came to the UK in 2003 with his Greek wife, who is also a doctor. The couple have been living and working on the island since and never felt like immigrants, until June.

Nearly 70% of Isle of Wight voters backed leave. “There are people who tell us it’s nothing personal as we were useful immigrants,” Cramer says before pausing. “Useful … And when we retire here in 20 years, are we no longer useful?”

Michaela Frye is similarly useful. A senior researcher at the department of genetics at the University of Cambridge, she has lived in the UK for 15 years and was dismayed by the outcome of the referendum.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gisela Stuart touring the country for Vote Leave events before the referendum. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Although in Cambridge nearly three-quarters of citizens voted for remain, Frye says a subtle new hostility has arisen there as well. Her son attends an independent British school with a high percentage of international families. Many parents told her neighbours were asking them when they would leave.

But where is home after 15 years in the UK? She says: “I feel European. That’s what all my work is about. And now what? Get lost?”

She is worried that Brexit could seriously harm her research. The laboratory where she and the 10 members of her team work is 50% funded by the EU. If that money dried up, she would have to rely entirely on the National Research Fund, which would struggle to match the value of EU programmes. As a result, Frye is looking for positions in Germany. She is not the only one.

Janz’s husband was offered a position in Berlin recently and the couple are considering returning to Germany. Their British colleagues are concerned that an exodus of foreign talent could leave key institutions struggling to cope.

“Brexit hasn’t made it easier for us,” Cramer says, adding that his hospital could be hit if Europeans leave the UK. “Up to 30% of the doctors in his hospital are non-British. We have 89 nations working here and we’ve had people give notice and applicants who decided not to come.

“The main reason was the uncertainty. If you come here and bring your family you don’t want to move after two years.”

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Like many other Germans, Cramer applied for permanent residency immediately after the referendum – as a precaution. Europeans living in Britain currently do not need the card, but applications are expected to surge amid ongoing uncertainty over EU citizens’ status in the UK.



Meanwhile, an increasing number of Britons with German ancestors are applying for German passports. The German embassy in London says there has been a significant rise in requests since the vote, mostly for passports, citizenship and social insurance.

Abraham, a British citizen with a German surname, applied for a German passport a couple of weeks ago. The PhD student works in Cyprus, where he grew up. “A German passport allows me to keep my bureaucratic European identity, as I identify with Europe,” he says.

Stuart is convinced that Britain’s borders won’t change. “I came here 40 years ago. I live in Birmingham where you have second and third generations. You can hardly find a more open country.”

Whether 300,000 Germans will agree with her by 2019 remains to be seen.

• Anna Lehmann is a political correspondent at the Berlin-based daily newspaper taz.die tageszeitung, and currently works in the Guardian’s offices on the George Weidenfeld bursary, an international journalists’ exchange programme