http://www.zeit.de/2009/43/Wallraff-43
Naturally, just as Germany's current reputation has made internationally clear, there are more skinheads and neo-nazi or fascist oriented lifestyles in those areas of Germany today--which before the Wall opened up in 1989 had belonged to the East German Communist government.
Therefore, unlike as "Ali" in West Germany of the 1980s, Wallraff, as black, was afraid even to enter the Cottbuss stadium as black-German in 2009. Wallraff simply stood outside the stadium before-, during-, and after the match as Cottbuss played another eastern German team, Dresden. Constantly, Wallraff attempted to engage in friendly conversations but was always received by hate and venomous words--simply because he was wearing a black man's skin.
Later, Wallraff noted he was saved at least once by intervention by some policemen on a Dresden-fans-filled train. On the other hand, other policemen in Eastern Germany just ignored the illegal Hitler salutes of the neo-Nazi youth going and coming from the stadium--and the life-threatening words coming from their mouths in Cotbuss.
In contrast, when the black Wallraff was later threatened in a bar in Bavaria, two men stood up for him there fairly forcefully. Wallraff was pleased by this civil courage. [Wallraff notes in der ZEIT article, that it is not only racism that has led to citizens failing often to stand up to protect fellow citizens from abuse.]
In his own hometown of Cologne, Germany, Wallraff generally usually perceives a cosmopolitan atmosphere--i.e. in a city with 2,000 years acceptance of immigrants. However, just as Wallraff had experienced 25 years earlier discrimination as the Turk "Ali", Wallraff found house- and flat hunting in Cologne full of latent discrimination.
In summary, unlike in eastern Germany, the discrimination in western part of Germany was covered by a coating of Prussian business politeness or brusqueness--a brusqueness which in Germany should not be automatically read as racism.
However, after the black-German, Wallraff, left an apartment where such politically-correct conversation had taken place in traditional Prussian exactness, his own colleagues from his documentary team for the film came into look at renting the same flat.
When these Caucasian-German colleagues spoke to the landlady--only to hear many bad words about how horrible Wallraff as black Somolia-born man had made that poor German landlady feel, e.g. so uncomfortable. She almost whined, "That kind of black hair doesn't belong here. Oooooah."
http://www.film-zeit.de/Film/21016/G%C3%BCNTER-WALLRAFF-SCHWARZ-AUF-WEI%C3%9F/Crew/
The book, BLACK LIKE ME, is still on reading lists throughout the United States of America--even thought John Howard Griffin originally published his experiment as black man in America almost 5 decades ago. So, perhaps a few decades from now, Germans will still be reading and seeing Guenther Wallraff books and documentaries.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_Griffin
In short, just as late in the 1950s America, John Howard Griffin, traveled for weeks around the USA in a public Greyhound bus disguised as black man, Guenther Wallraff has been up to the same tricks in Germany for many decades as an undercover-journalist.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Black-like-Me/John-Howard-Griffin/e/9780451192035
The exercise of not-just-stepping-into-the-other's-shoes but jumping-into-the-other's skin is important now and again for Germany and every other society to undertake and imagine.
I'm sure that the new film from Walraff: SCHWARZ AUF WEISS (Black on White) will bring new insights and discussions to a boil in Germany concerning immigration and integration in society. Hopefully, legislation and education will follow to support greater and better integration and immigration in Germany in the coming decade, too.
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