His resignation, announced Thursday, means President Christian Wulff no longer has to decide whether to approve the Bundesbank’s request, an awkward task that threatened to expose Merkel to a backlash from conservative voters. Sarrazin, a former finance minister of the city of Berlin had long been outspoken, but recent claims that Jews shared a particular gene and Muslim immigrants were lowering the intelligence quotient of German society proved a tipping point.

Polls have showed Germans are divided about Sarrazin’s views, though many phone-ins came out strongly in his favor.

His 464-page book, which has become a bestseller, argues in part that Muslims undermine German society, sponge off the state and may swamp the country due to a higher birth rate.

While in the capital, Sarrazin won praise for cutting the city’s huge budget deficit, racking up the first budget surplus in its postwar history in 2007.

Germans must forget the hysteria surrounding Thilo Sarrazin and take an honest look at the integration of immigrants into their society, argues Roger Boyes, the Berlin correspondent for the British daily The Times.

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Polls have showed Germans are divided about Sarrazin’s views, though many phone-ins came out strongly in his favor.

His 464-page book, which has become a bestseller, argues in part that Muslims undermine German society, sponge off the state and may swamp the country due to a higher birth rate.

While in the capital, Sarrazin won praise for cutting the city’s huge budget deficit, racking up the first budget surplus in its postwar history in 2007.

A year ago a Turkish entrepreneur set up a kebab shop just opposite my favourite baker near the entrance to the train station. At first, there were Anatolian delights like Döner and Börek, then he expanded to include newspapers, coffee and grilled chicken. Finally, he ended up selling the classic Berlin fast food Currywurst. Last week the shop was shut.

A sad development for him personally, but his business plan was not exactly brilliant: my neighbourhood Grunewald is not exactly famous for its thriving Turkish community – indeed many of its elderly German residents would probably be itching to call the police if they saw a young Muslim-looking man roving the streets.

Of course, the name Thilo Sarrazin has been on everybody’s lips in our sedate and resolutely conservative ‘hood lately. Attacking the alleged unwillingness of Muslim immigrants to integrate into German society, the disgraced Bundesbank board member has become a kind of martyr, a supposed truth-teller; a hero in the struggle against suffocating political correctness apparently on the rise in Germany. But we know that the story is a little more complex than that, don’t we?

Sarrazin’s controversial book, Deutschland schafft sich ab – Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen, or “Abolishing Germany – How we’re putting our country at jeopardy,” tries to use statistics to make a variety of contradictory arguments.

However, a talent for stirring up controversy — including his suggestion in 2008 that the poor could wear sweaters if their heating bills got too dear — meant many in the SPD were glad to nominate him for a move to the Bundesbank in 2009.

Prominent figures were not spared his scorn.

In 2007, Sarrazin called ex-SPD chief Oskar Lafontaine an “arsehole” on television. Prominent German Jewish journalist Michel Friedman described having the same experience last week.

Sarrazin, a civil servant since 1975 whom the German press once nicknamed “Rambo” for his no-holds-barred approach to politics, alienated many of his former allies after departing Berlin for the Bundesbank in May 2009.