Dunya Hayali is the new face of German television and, remarkably, she is neither blue-eyed nor blonde.

The co-anchorwoman for Germany’s flagship news programme, heute-journal, has Iraqi parents and her appearance on screen marks a small revolution in one of the most racially homogenous societies in Europe. She has become the first person of colour to present a prime-time news programme on German television.

“Sure, it played a role for ZDF [the second state broadcasting channel] that I came from an immigrant background,” Ms Hayali, 32, said. “But if I hadn’t been qualified in other ways I certainly wouldn’t have been sitting here.”

The dearth of immigrant role models, in the media, politics and business, was a key issue in the so-called “integration summit” chaired in the Berlin chancellery yesterday by Angela Merkel.

The German leader, wanting to avoid the ethnic friction experienced in Britain and France, summoned 60 representatives from immigrant groups, who met leading businessman and politicians.

Race riots are very rare in Germany, but it does lag behind other EU countries in promoting talented people of immigrant origin. A study by the Körber Foundation showed that only 80 people of Turkish origin held political office in Germany, out of a community of 2.7 million. That includes five members of parliament, none of them in Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, with the others scattered among regional assemblies and town councils. “I’m a prisoner of my background,” says Lale Akguen, the Social Democratic deputy chairman, who came to Germany as a child. “I lived in Turkey for nine years of my life, Germany for 44 years. For most people it is only the nine years that count.”

Ms Hayali was born and educated in Germany, is a German citizen and speaks perfect German. But she is constantly referred to as “the Iraqi”.

The most high-profile black journalist in television – virtually the only one in front of a camera – is Cherno Jobatey, a half-Ghanian presenter of the ZDF breakfast programme. For years he wore white trainers under his suit so that viewers could refer to him as the “reporter in gym shoes” rather than the “black reporter”. Now he has taken to wearing leather shoes – a sign of growing social acceptance.

Ms Merkel tried yesterday to reassure Turkish representatives that stricter immigration rules, passed into law last week, were not targeted against them. One new provision is that when wives join their immigrant husbands in Germany, they should be able to speak some basic German. But four Turkish organisations boycotted the summit, claiming that it was the latest attempt to put pressure on their community.

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