‘Sprich kein Deutsch’: Germans fear for place in post-Brexit Britain

German mother who has lived in London for 13 years says she no longer feels safe speaking her native language in public

The investigation will look at whether Vote Leave exceeded its spending limit in the referendum (Getty)

“If you are out with the children, maybe don’t speak German too loudly at the moment.”

That’s the advice of a German woman who has lived in London for 13 years, but is now considering the consequences of Brexit for the future of her family.

Carmen Prem was speaking to the German newspaper Die Welt, which suggested foreigners in the UK were experiencing “a new bitterness, an anger which hardly any on the countless non-Brits on the island had expected”.

“The tone has changed,” Ms Prem said. "No Brit would ever tell me, ‘We do not want you to be here any more,’ but it is now ‘we and you’.”

In the month after the UK voted to leave the EU reported xenophobic incidents rose 41 per cent, and Europe reeled at the alleged hate-aggravated murder of Polish man Arek Józwik in Harlow at the end of August.

The Government has been accused of adding to the hostile environment for foreigners. Theresa May has said she sees anti-immigrant sentiment as the main reason behind the Brexit vote, and the Tories have proposed - and later dropped - plans to compile lists of foreign workers at UK businesses.

Sergei Cristo, a prominent Russia-born Tory activist and fundraiser, told Die Welt: “May chooses a very controversial language. Half of the country voted against Brexit, but she tells them: Keep your mouth shut, you have lost, you do not represent Great Britain anymore.”

German professor Mischa Dohler, who teaches wireless communication at King's College London, has been living in London with his wife and two daughters for 15 years.

He told Die Welt that the shifting mood in the country meant, for the first time, he was considering his options elsewhere.

He said he had rejected a long term post at Cambridge and would give it one year to improve before making a decision, adding: “Many non-British academics simply do not see a future here.”

And Manuel Dries, a German Erasmus student who came to the UK in the nineties and now teaches at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, said he had been attracted to Britain in the first place by its place at the heart of the international exchange of ideas.

“The intrinsic and instrumental good of internationality must not be discounted,” he said. “If this is lost, it will not only harm Great Britain, but the whole world.”

The academics’ anecdotal evidence appears to be borne out by figures. Official data released on Thursday suggest the number of early applicants to British universities from other EU countries has dropped by 9 percent year-on-year following the referendum.

The data, from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), covered courses requiring early applications, which are medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine at any British university, and any course at Oxford or Cambridge.

The figures may be an early sign that the vote has deterred EU nationals from coming to study in Britain, where universities have warned that Brexit could endanger funding and access to research projects, making it harder to attract quality staff.

In September, Oxford came top of the widely respected Times Higher Education global university league table for the first time, but its vice-chancellor warned that Brexit could damage its long-term prospects.

Additional reporting by agencies