Crisis shows changing soul of Germany

EUROPE’S refugee crisis is revealing the changing soul of Germany.

Back in 2010, Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that multiculturalism in Germany had been an abject failure; today the nation is opening its arms to hundreds of thousands of refugees, many of them Muslims from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The same year, politician Thilo Sarrazin published his book Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany does away with itself), warning that Muslim immigrants were ruining German society. It shot to the top of the best-seller lists.

And yet in the past week crowds of Germans have greeted migrants arriving in the country with cheers, while volunteers are turning out in droves to help them.

“This is the moment where Germany has recognised it has a global role,” said Harold James, an economic historian at Princeton University. “The country is changing very, very quickly.”

The government expects 800 000 people to seek asylum in Germany this year, nearly twice as many as in any other year since reunification 25 years ago.

High risk

Merkel, known for her caution, has taken the high-risk step of opening Germany’s doors wide, and implored her EU partners to follow the example.

Encouraged by her, tens of thousands have arrived in the last week alone, many making the arduous and dangerous journey from the Middle East through Turkey, across the Aegean to Greece and then by land through the Balkans, Hungary and Austria.

She took the lead, her advisers say, to avoid an imminent humanitarian disaster, and German society seems ready to back her for the moment.

A poll earlier this month showed 33 percent of respondents wanted fewer refugees. But collectively they were well outnumbered by the 37 percent in favour of Germany continuing to take a similar number in the future.

For some, it is hard to reconcile Merkel’s generous approach to the refugees with her hard line on bailing out Greece, where she has sometimes seemed to bow to public opinion and put German interests above all else. Others view her refugee stance as a reversal. – Reuters