One Room in Frankfurt, No Arabs Please

A guy named Lukas posted a roommate listing in Frankfurt’s Bockenheim neighborhood that reads like a manifesto a mediocre person might compose between energy drinks. The apartment itself—fine, probably. The requirements are where things get educational.

He wants someone who will respect our European value system. Spaniards, Italians, English, Germans—welcome. Arabs and Africans, however, are kindly asked to look elsewhere. He phrases this with the calm confidence of a man who has never had to examine a single thought he’s ever had. Not done there: he also rules out political scientists and anyone with a left-leaning field of study, described as people who make a living picking money out of other people’s pockets.

What gets me is the bureaucratic tidiness of it. He’s not ranting—he’s filing a form. The racism is presented as a logistical preference, like specifying no smokers or no pets. The casual certainty that this is simply a reasonable way to organize the world. No anger, no awareness that anything is wrong. Just Lukas and his value system, looking for a compatible flatmate.

Frankfurt is a genuinely international city—roughly a third of its population has a migration background. Lukas has lived there long enough to advertise a room and still arrived at these conclusions. That takes a special kind of discipline.