 |
(
…) “the tweet sent out by the Federal Office for Migration and
Refugees on August 25, for example, which gave the impression that
Germany was opening its doors to all Syrian refugees. But it is
obvious to all that Merkel has lost control of refugee policy. There
is a discrepancy between that which she feels is right and the side
effects these policies are having on her country. It seems as though
she is playing for time, but the game doesn't look to be turning in
her favor.
Angela
Merkel wanted to give Germany a friendly, humanitarian face. And it
worked for a few weeks. But now, the German face has become a
grimace.”
|
The
Isolated Chancellor: What Is Driving Angela Merkel?
By
Markus Feldenkirchen and René Pfister
Chancellor
Angela Merkel spent a decade amassing political capital. Now, with
the refugee crisis showing no signs of abating, she has decided to
spend it. With her legacy in the balance, she has finally found an
issue to fight for. But why now?
On a Sunday evening
in early January, Angela Merkel went to a piano concert by Antonio
Acunto in the Konzerthaus on Berlin's beautiful Gendarmenmarkt. The
program included works from Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Schumann, but
the chancellor didn't just come for the music. It was also for a good
cause and to show support. The concert was a benefit for the
refugees. Her refugees.
Shortly before the
concert began, Merkel saw an old acquaintance: Reverend Rainer
Eppelmann. In 1990, Eppelmann was head of the Democratic Awakening, a
party formed in East Germany soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
and Merkel was its spokesperson. The party was ultimately folded into
the Christian Democratic Union, of which Merkel is now the head.
At the concert,
Eppelmann told Merkel how courageous and wonderful he thought her
refugee policies were. Given the situation in which Merkel is now in,
Eppelmann said, he finds himself thinking often about his favorite
quote from the former Czech president and writer Vaclav Havel. "Hope
is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the
certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns
out."
The concert began
and Merkel listened to a melancholic Chopin ballad in G-minor. When
the intermission arrived, she jumped up from her chair and walked
directly over to Eppelmann. She asked: "How did that quote about
hope go again?"
It is completely
unclear how the experiment will end that the German chancellor has
forced upon the European Continent, upon her fellow citizens and, not
least, upon her party. Her decision late last summer to open the
German border to refugees transformed Merkel into a historic figure.
It was the most consequential decision of her entire decade in
office. The US newsmagazine Time named her Person of the Year and in
the fall, she was widely considered to be in the running for the
Nobel Peace Prize.
Since then, the mood
has shifted, and not just in Germany. To prevent "a rebirth of
1930s-style political violence," New York Times columnist Ross
Douthat recently wrote, "Angela Merkel must go."
Within Merkel's
conservatives, there are those who have begun envisioning a
government without the party's current leader. At the beginning of
last week, Transportation Minister Alexander Dobrindt, a member of
the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to
Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), openly criticized Merkel,
something that generally isn't done. In the past, mutiny on the part
of government-level ministers has been a sign that a chancellor may
soon be forced out of office.
The Rough Draft of
Merkel's Downfall
The screenplay for
Merkel's downfall hasn't yet been written, but an initial rough draft
already exists. CSU head Horst Seehofer intends to heap pressure on
Merkel for as long as it takes until she changes course. He isn't
trying to push her out of office, but if she doesn't acquiesce, there
are some in the conservative camp who could easily imagine Finance
Minister Wolfgang Schäuble taking over the reins of government.
It hasn't come that
far yet, but a critical mass is slowly coalescing. In a letter to the
chancellor last week, 44 conservative parliamentarians voiced their
opposition to Merkel's course. On Wednesday, Austria announced the
introduction of a cap on refugees. The chancellor is becoming
increasingly isolated.
As much as the
decision to open the borders itself, what amazes many observers is
the stubbornness with which Merkel has maintained her political
course. Neither the terror attacks in Paris nor the sexual assaults
on New Year's Eve in Cologne -- neither the indignation of furious
German citizens nor the warnings from within her own party -- has led
Merkel to question her decision to keep Germany's borders open. It
seems as though Angela Merkel -- à la Vaclav Havel -- is convinced
that her course of action makes sense. No matter how the situation
turns out.
"The German
people are going to riot. The German people are going to end up
overthrowing that woman," Republican presidential candidate
Donald Trump predicted in mid-January. "I don't know what the
hell she is thinking."
Trump isn't the only
one who has questions. Half the world is wondering what is motivating
the German chancellor. What's the answer? What's driving Angela
Merkel, a woman who gained power by virtue of her implacable
pragmatism and who is now governing so unconditionally? Why has she
thus far shown no serious indication that she might shift course on
refugee policy despite the fact that her popularity ratings are
plummeting and the foundations of her power are crumbling?
Merkel's chief of
staff, Peter Altmaier, has a beautiful office in the Chancellery with
a view of Berlin's central train station and of the government
quarter. But the thick windows keep out the din of the city -- such
that the most conspicuous quality of the seat of government is the
silence inside. Altmaier is the voice of Merkel's refugee policy,
even if, as the interview takes place, he is suffering from a
terrible cold. From Merkel's perspective, Altmaier explains, this is
what the world looks like: In order to avoid a humanitarian
catastrophe late last summer, she had little choice but to open the
borders. Now, the task is that of preventing Europe from falling
apart. Were Germany to now close its borders, it wouldn't just mark a
failure for Europe's border-free travel regime known as Schengen. The
refugee flow would also backup across the Balkans and would
destabilize the fragile young democracies there.
A Chain of Political
Necessities
Greece would become
overrun with desperate refugees from Syria and Iraq while Jordan and
Lebanon, which are already hosting almost 2 million refugees, could
be pushed to the brink of collapse. The alternative is a deal with
Turkey, the country through which almost all the refugees have to
travel.
That, at least, is
the official version. When speaking with Merkel's people, her refugee
policies come across as being entirely rational. Like a chain of
political necessities.
One reason that
Merkel has been able to stay in the Chancellery for so long is that
she has never fought for a larger political project. She had no great
political goals. She liked playing the role of crisis chancellor,
similar to Helmut Schmidt before her. But now, at this late phase of
her rule, she suddenly resembles an early Willy Brandt, the
visionary.
It's not that Merkel
had no convictions when she moved into the Chancellery in 2005.
Having grown up in East Germany, she believed in the power of freedom
and of the markets. But because voters weren't particularly enamored
of her reform proposals in 2005, she dropped them. And early on, she
hardly spoke at all about her East German origins or her faith.
That reticence was
an element of her success, enabling her to avoid alienating western
Germans, atheists and faithful Catholics. Over time, she rose to
become the most popular of all politicians in Germany -- and she
remained there. Early last summer, she was way ahead in all of the
polls and she had collected a significant amount of political
capital. The question was if she would ever spend it.
On July 15, Merkel
met a 13-year-old girl named Reem Sahwil at a town meeting in the
northern German city of Rostock. The girl had fled to Germany from
Lebanon four years before but she was now in danger of being
deported. "It is really painful to see others really enjoying
life when you can't enjoy life yourself," the girl said.
It was the old
Merkel who answered. She didn't want to seem heartless, but she also
didn't want to make any promises just because she had stumbled into
an awkward situation. "(If we would say) you can all come from
Africa, and you can all come -- we couldn't handle that," Merkel
stammered. Couldn't handle it. Not long after Merkel finished, Reem
began crying and Merkel awkwardly tried to comfort her. In the days
that followed, Merkel was accused of being cold-hearted and she was
widely criticized on the Internet.
At the end of
August, she and her spokesman Steffen Seibert traveled to Heidenau.
The town in Saxony is home to a former DIY store that had been
transformed into a refugee shelter -- and in front of which
right-wing hooligans had rioted a few days earlier. As Merkel's
motorcade pulled up, she was received by a furiously whistling crowd.
As she climbed back into her car an hour later, a woman yelled:
"Cunt! Get back into your ugly car!" Even much later,
Seibert was still talking about the lynch-mob atmosphere.
In the days that
followed, something changed in the Chancellery. When Merkel gave her
annual summer press conference on August 31, she no longer said that
Germany is unable to take everybody. Neither did she speak of the
risk of being overwhelmed, like she had in Rostock. "Germany is
a strong country," Merkel said. "The motivation with which
we should approach these things has to be: We have handled so much.
We can handle it!"
Merkel had decided
to fight for an issue. She had saved for so long and carefully
protected her power -- now she was intent on spending her political
capital. It was only then that the Germans began getting to know the
real Angela Merkel.
On Sept. 4, she
opened up the border to the refugees trapped in Hungary. Later, she
said that she had watched on television as people from Syria had
gathered in the Keleti train station in Budapest and were then
prevented from continuing their journey. She found it outrageous.
Merkel decided to allow the refugees to come to Germany. Three days
later, she said she was "a bit proud of our country."
From then on, the
numbers of refugees coming to Germany began to climb rapidly. Soon,
it was 10,000 per day -- and as the influx grew, so too did the
number of Merkel's critics. Bavarian Governor Seehofer said that
Merkel had made a mistake that would affect Germany for a long time
to come. It was a sentence that helped transform the refugee issue
into a power struggle. Until then, Merkel had always been flexible.
She used to be in favor of general conscription, and then she got rid
of it. She was against shutting down Germany's nuclear power plants,
and then she was in favor. "But she isn't flexible when she is
under pressure," says one of her confidants. "Perhaps that
is her greatest blemish."
On Oct. 6, she was
sitting in a plane bringing her back to Berlin from a trip to India.
She could certainly have used a bit of relaxation, but Merkel wanted
to explain herself. She could feel that the questions were becoming
more pressing and her answers less convincing.
Everything Was
Connected
She had a paper
brought to her from the cockpit showing the plane's route from
Bangalore to Berlin and, surrounded by reporters, her finger wandered
across the map, pointing at Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and Germany.
For her, it was more than just a piece of paper, it was confirmation
of her policies: a clear indication that Germany could no longer
simply isolate itself. To Merkel, it showed that everything was
connected to everything else.
The Germans may wish
for a time prior to the refugee crisis, but that is a wish she cannot
fulfill, Merkel said. Of course she could close the borders, but then
masses of people would accumulate in front of the barbed wire. The
images would be ugly. Germans, she said, can't even stand it when
someone is forced to spend the night outside.
She, though, wanted
to combat the causes of the refugee crisis at the roots and cooperate
with Turkey, Merkel said. As long as she was leading, Germany would
not become a country that intentionally chased away people in need.
"I will not become involved in a competition for who can treat
the refugees the worst," she said. It is a sentence full of
pride, and one with a tiny bit of defiance directed at Seehofer as
well.
One day later, in an
appearance on a popular prime-time political talk show moderated by
Anne Will, she repeated her message from the airplane almost word for
word. Merkel, for whom almost nothing is less appealing than being
forced to talk on television, smiled often during that talk show. On
many other issues, you can see by the way she speaks that she doesn't
really care about what she's saying. But on this issue, it is
completely different. "She was more passionate than usual,"
says Will, who has interviewed Merkel several times, in hindsight.
During the show, Will says, she often thought to herself: "She
seems looser, more unfettered in her choice of words. She seemed at
peace with herself, almost gleeful. That was new."
Merkel, of course,
also saw the refugee crisis in the light of realpolitik. She has long
pursued the goal of stealing centrist voters away from the
center-left Social Democrats (SPD). The difficulties the SPD has had
in recent years are also a product of Merkel's active involvement in
almost all issues near and dear to the left. The CDU has long pursued
the goal of ensuring that no party could establish itself to its
right on the political spectrum. But, says a close confidant only
half joking, "Merkel is the first CDU leader who has pursued the
goal of ensuring that no party to the left of the CDU can establish
itself."
Yet if it had only
been about tactics, Merkel would have abandoned her approach long
ago, at the latest when the right-wing populist party Alternative for
Germany (AfD) began rising in the polls and her own popularity
figures began dropping. There must be a different, more personal
motivation, for her unwillingness to change course.
Building a Fence
At the end of
October, she went to a summit in Brussels involving the countries
along the Balkan Route, the trail used by most refugees to get to
Germany. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who built a barbed
wire fence around his country to keep out the migrants, was also
there. He saw, and enjoyed, seeing Merkel in a fix. He took the floor
and said: "It is only a matter of time before Germany builds a
fence. Then I'll have the Europe that I believe is right."
Merkel said nothing
at first, a person present at the meeting relates. Only later, after
a couple other heads of government had their say, did Merkel turn to
Orbán and say: "I lived behind a fence for too long for me to
now wish for those times to return." Merkel, the refugee crisis
has made clear, has found the courage to justify her politics with
her own biography. She no longer wants to be the woman without a
face.
"It is an
astounding late-life friendship," Klaus von Dohnanyi, the Social
Democrat and former Hamburg mayor, says of his relationship with
Angela Merkel. They meet regularly, usually together with their
spouses, and only rarely talk politics. More often, they chat about
concerts they have been to recently, visits to the theater and the
natural sciences.
Dohnanyi knew
Merkel's parents and he believes that her Christian roots are very
apparent in her approach to the refugee crisis. "She is the
daughter of a socialist pastor. And her mother was an extremely
devout woman. Such things are deep within you, they don't just
disappear," he says. The Kasner family (Merkel is the name of
the chancellor's first husband) adhered to a practical form of
theology that involved helping the poor, sick and disadvantaged,
Dohnanyi says.
Merkel grew up with
the tenet that, if a stranger is standing in the rain before your
door, you let him in and help, he continues. "And when you let
them in, you don't grimace," Dohnanyi says. "Christians
don't do that." Merkel herself recently said something similar.
"We hold speeches on Sundays and we talk about values. I am the
chair of a Christian political party. And then people come to us from
2,000 kilometers away and then you're supposed to say: You can't show
a friendly face here anymore?"
Pastor Eppelmann is
likewise convinced that Merkel's approach to the refugee crisis is
deeply rooted in her past. "She stands on a solid foundation
that was poured in her childhood and youth." He also points out
that her childhood home was not a normal Protestant parsonage, rather
it was a church-run home for people with disabilities. Angela Kasner
grew up surrounded by disabled people who needed to be cared for.
"She breathed in empathy like air and oxygen," says
Eppelmann.
Later, Eppelmann
goes on, Merkel also experienced what it is like to be pushed around
by a regime. She initially was not granted a slot at university
despite being best in her class. "Such an experience can break a
person," Eppelmann says. As such, Merkel can understand what it
must be like for people fleeing Islamic State or the regime of Bashar
Assad in Syria.
The Protestant
Parsonage
The most important
element, though, was the evangelical parsonage, emphasizes Eppelmann,
who also worked as a pastor in East Germany. One "becomes aware
of a certain ethical standards regarding how life should be led."
That includes that one shouldn't value oneself more than other
people, no matter where they come from, Eppelmann says.
Every day, Jesus and
God were discussed in the Kasner household, Eppelmann continues. The
daily message was: "Love thy neighbor as yourself. Not just
German people. God loves everybody." You should compare the
Protestant Church's statement on the refugee crisis with Merkel's
words, Eppelmann suggests. "They are virtually identical."
When Merkel spoke to
the CDU party convention in the middle of December, her speech was
indeed reminiscent of a sermon. She recalled significant CDU
achievements from the past, such as binding Germany to the West and
reunification, which former chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Helmut
Kohl had pushed through against opposition and doubt. Then she
presented her own policies as the heir to these miracles of Christian
Democracy.
"The founding
of the CDU was in reality an outrageous idea," she said. "A
party that finds its foundation in C, in the God-given dignity of
each individual person. That means that today, it isn't a mass of
people that is coming to us. It means they are individuals."
When she stopped speaking after an hour, even the doubters and
skeptics applauded her speech. For nine full minutes. Only one member
of the audience seemed unimpressed: Wolfgang Schäuble, Merkel's
finance minister.
Schäuble, despite
the sweater thrown over his shirt, is a bit chilly. It is the end of
November and Schäuble spent four hours that morning in parliament,
where it is always a bit drafty. But he hadn't wanted to leave early.
Merkel was delivering her speech on the Chancellery budget and
Schäuble didn't want it to look once again as though he wanted
nothing to do with her policies.
Only a few days
earlier, Schäuble had compared the chancellor to a clumsy skier who
triggers an avalanche on a steep slope. It was an image that provided
confirmation to those who blame Merkel for the flood of refugees
arriving in Europe. In the papers, there were stories claiming that
Schäuble was prepared to take over for Merkel if necessary. But is
that accurate?
German conservatives
believe that only Schäuble would be able to fill Merkel's shoes. He
was chief of staff in the Chancellery back when Merkel was still
working as a scientist at East Germany's Academy of Sciences. He has
also served as interior minister, CDU head and CDU floor leader in
parliament. Now, at age 73, he embodies the hopes of those who would
like to see the back of Merkel.
Searching for a Cap
Schäuble believes
Merkel was right to open up Germany's borders to refugees stranded in
Hungary on that night in early September. But he would like to have
seen an indication from her at the same time that Germany cannot
continue accepting refugees without limits.
In mid-September, he
encouraged Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière to demand that a
system be created whereby Europe would accept a certain number of
refugees -- as a way to cap the numbers coming to Germany. De
Maizière took his advice and made the proposal in the form of an
interview with DER SPIEGEL that appeared on Sept. 19.
It didn't take long,
however, for both SPD head and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and
Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert to distance themselves from de
Maizière's proposal, much to Schäuble's chagrin. Not long later,
Schäuble had a meeting with Merkel in the Chancellery. You can't
just leave de Maizière fluttering in the wind, he complained. Merkel
responded that Seibert had no other choice because the SPD, Merkel's
junior coalition partner, would not have gone along with de
Maizière's proposal. But SPD voters also want to see a reduction in
the number of refugees coming to Germany, which is why Gabriel would
ultimately come around, Schäuble insisted. "They wouldn't stick
to their rejection for even three days," he said.
In recent years,
Schäuble has developed an elder-statesmanlike aura, but when it
comes to domestic policy, he was long a hardliner. He believes that
Merkel pays too little attention to the sensitivities of the right
wing. Had it been up to him, he would have drastically cut benefits
available to asylum-seekers while demanding that they pay for at
least part of their German lessons. Schäuble is uninterested in the
fact that Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ruled a few years
ago that the state cannot simply continue cutting asylum-seeker
benefits. "I'll throw out any constitutional consultant who says
such a thing," he growled to his people.
Schäuble has
perfected the art of playing the dissident role without openly
contradicting the chancellor. He is a loyalist and a rebel at the
same time -- which helps explain his popularity and the fact that he
has passed up Merkel in the opinion polls. When he was asked by the
Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper a few days ago whether he follows
Merkel in the refugee crisis out of conviction or out of loyalty, he
responded: "You can't ask such a question to an intelligent
person." It was another typical Schäuble sentence that allows
for a number of different interpretations. Of all senior politicians
in Berlin, it is Schäuble who is most likely to play Brutus.
Not long after
comparing Merkel to a skier who triggered an avalanche, Schäuble
called the chancellor to apologize. But as he often does, he threw in
a bit of devilish humor. "Comparing you to a skier was wrong,
that hardly fits you," he said. One has to remember that two
years ago Merkel broke her pelvis while cross-country skiing despite
her extremely slow pace. One can definitely not imagine her powder
skiing on a steep slope.
But how far will he
go? Merkel's people comfort themselves with the fact that Schäuble
has never before risked an open rebellion. He didn't attempt to
topple Helmut Kohl when the chancellor refused to make way for a
younger generation of CDU politicians in the 1990s. And when Merkel
kept Greece in the euro zone against his will, he also declined to
revolt.
Coldly Rational
Yet even today, it
is difficult for Schäuble to accept his position as number two in
the party behind Merkel. It was Schäuble, after all, who promoted
Merkel to the position of CDU general secretary back in 1998, only to
see her replace him as party chair after he stumbled over the same
donation scandal that has tainted Kohl's legacy. In moments of
clarity, it is clear to him that he is actually too old to take over
the Chancellery. On the other hand, though, wasn't Adenauer also 73
when he became chancellor?
Ultimately,
everything depends on CSU head Horst Seehofer. Like Schäuble, his
political view is generally a coldly rational one, but at times he
too sees the world through the lens of past political affronts, the
unavoidable product of a long career in the public eye. Recently,
Seehofer has been issuing new threats and ultimatums on a weekly
basis. He has the reputation of being a flip-flopper, but in the
refugee crisis, he has pursued the same strategy from the very
beginning. It is a strategy based on numbers: Germany can accept
refugees, but a million each year is too many. No chancellor can hold
out long against such an influx, Seehofer believes.
"When the
situation drifts completely out of control, it will no longer be
possible to restrain the political mood in the country."
Seehofer uttered that sentence on Nov. 3, 2015. It was a Tuesday and
Seehofer was in the Bavarian representation in Berlin. He had spent
the previous weekend in the capital for meetings on the refugee
crisis.
One of those
meetings was a 10-hour marathon with Merkel in the Chancellery, along
with Chief of Staff Altmaier, conservative floor leader Volker Kauder
and Gerda Hasselfeldt, who is head of the group of CSU federal
parliamentarians from Bavaria. The Bavarians were trying to convince
the others of the necessity of capping the number of refugees coming
to Germany, but Merkel and Altmaier were having none of it. In the
end, they agreed that the number of refugees coming to Germany had to
drop. Merkel herself wrote down the decisive sentence.
"The chancellor
herself retrieved the paper. It was a formulation marathon,"
Seehofer said afterwards. "At the moment we are very pleased
with the paper," he added with a crooked smile. The formulation
represented his first small victory in the battle with Merkel. For
Seehofer, the struggle isn't just about refugee numbers. It is also
about the future of the CSU, which has always derived its
disproportionate power from the fact that it consistently wins
absolute majorities in Bavarian state elections. "The CDU can
afford it if its support slides below 40 percent. But for us, it is
existential," Seehofer says.
From Seehofer's
perspective, Merkel committed her cardinal sin when she opened the
doors to the refugees trapped in Hungary. That night, she tried to
reach Seehofer by mobile phone. But he was sleeping and didn't answer
-- at least according to his version of events. When she finally got
through to him the next morning, she knew the precise time she had
tried to reach him the night before. It sounded as though she had a
bad conscience.
'A Very Receptive
Country'
"We won't be
able to handle it," Seehofer said of the number of refugees now
making their way to Germany.
"I'm saddened
to hear you say that," Merkel responded.
Looking back,
Seehofer says the chancellor made a huge mistake despite having the
best intentions. From his perspective, it would still have been
possible to impose order on the situation later. One could have
declared that the opening of the border was a humanitarian exception.
But when Merkel defended her decision at a press conference on Sept.
7 with Vice Chancellor Gabriel, she said something different.
"Germany is a receptive country," she said.
Seehofer has a
theory about dealing with political mistakes: Problems are not the
consequence of erroneous decisions, but of the inability to rapidly
correct them. "Often, politicians are doomed by the beta
mistakes," he says. It becomes particularly problematic, he
says, when the initial mistake is justified with a political
philosophy. For Seehofer, Merkel's fatal philosophy her idea of a
Wilkommenskultur, of welcoming the refugees.
He says he doesn't
think Merkel consciously intended to put her position at risk. "She
is of an age when you no longer give up power willingly. She might
cook for her husband every now and then, but politics is her life,"
Seehofer says. The beginning of the end for every chancellor, he
says, is when the distance to the party's grassroots begins to grow.
Helmut Schmidt fell when he agreed to allow NATO to station nuclear
missiles in West Germany, he notes, and Gerhard Schröder fell when
he cut unemployment and retirement benefits.
Merkel, he
continues, is certainly able to correct her mistakes. He leans back
and thinks back to 2004, a time when conservatives in Germany were
bickering about far-reaching reform plans -- plans that Seehofer felt
were neo-liberal aberrations. When Merkel came within a hair's
breadth of losing the 2005 election, she simply discarded her reform
plans. "There was no official funeral," Seehofer says. Were
Merkel to now correct her course in the refugee crisis, Seehofer says
she wouldn't admit it. "She would never say that it had been
wrong."
It may be that
Merkel never admits to making mistakes. But it is more likely that
she is convinced she is doing the right thing. And that, in part, has
to do with people like Hassan Alasad. He's wearing a dark blue
sweater-vest over a light blue shirt and sitting in a shelter in
northwest Berlin. Two mobile phones are lying in front of him. He
takes one of them and begins swiping through photos. Of course he
still has it: He will always have it with him, for his entire life.
The photo, which
transformed the Syrian refugee into a symbol, shows him next to the
chancellor smiling into the mobile phone camera. It is perhaps the
most famous selfie of 2015 and it was quickly shared around the
world. It became symbolic of Germany's efforts to welcome the
refugees -- efforts that are now synonymous with Merkel's name and
that have led her to the low point of her political career.
'An Amazing Feeling'
It was Sept. 10 when
Merkel visited the shelter, where Alasad still lives. She seemed so
friendly, so approachable, he now says, that he spontaneously asked
her for a selfie. Back home, Alasad explains, it was impossible to
ever approach those in power. In 12 years, he never even shook hands
with the mayor of his own hometown. "Then, I had only been in
Germany for just a couple of days and the chancellor comes by in
person to greet us." Alasad shakes his head and laughs. "That
was an amazing feeling."
Chancellor Angela
Merkel takes a selfie with Hassan Alasad in Berlin on Sept. 10, 2015
in Berlin.Zoom
DPA
Chancellor Angela
Merkel takes a selfie with Hassan Alasad in Berlin on Sept. 10, 2015
in Berlin.
Friends from around
the world called him after the photo began to go viral: from Dubai,
from Belgrade and even from Afghanistan. It was printed in countless
newspapers and Internet sites. He saved almost all of them in his
mobile phone.
"I thought
Germany was a paradise," Alasad says. "The most orderly
country in the world. A country with structures." His vision of
Germany is everything that his homeland doesn't have. Before bombs
destroyed his office and warehouse, Hassan Alasad was a businessman.
He didn't want to leave Syria, but he felt useless there, a feeling
he had had for quite some time. When he and his brother went to a
lake one day and airplanes dropped bombs that ripped apart friends
and acquaintances, they decided to leave Syria.
On Jan. 5, Merkel
was in the lobby of the Chancellery to listen to the Sternsinger
children's choir as she does every year in early January. She sang
along with the boys and girls to a Biblical song called "We Saw
His Star in the East." At one point, it looked almost as though
Merkel had to wipe away a tear from the corner of her eye.
Then she held a
brief address. She noted that people now see the Sternsinger, who go
from house to house singing carols on the Epiphany, as cultural
heritage. But in actuality, she went on, it is a Christian tradition.
The motto of the Sternsinger is respect, and respect is also anchored
in the German constitution, where it says that human dignity is
inviolable, she said. But that doesn't just apply to Germans and
Europeans. "Rather it also applies to all people -- to every
person as God's creature." Her approach to the refugees, it
seemed, hadn't changed with the New Year.
Still, since that
November day she spent with Seehofer in the Chancellery, the
situation has become more acute almost by the day. The number of
refugees arriving in Germany has dropped slightly, but that could
change again soon once winter storms subside. Seehofer has continued
steering his party into a conflict with Merkel and since the sexual
assaults on New Year's Eve in Cologne, the hate felt in broad swaths
of the populace for Merkel's refugee policies has only intensified.
No Mood to Admit
Defeat
"We have to
continually urge each other on so that we can change things for the
good," Merkel told the Sternsinger. It was a touching sentence.
Merkel is doing her best to fight against the growing numbers,
particularly since Cologne, of those who would like to see her fail
-- and against the increasingly sneering sentiment that her approach
was a naive attempt to make the world more humane.
Her confidants these
days are in no mood to admit defeat. At most, they will own up to
minor mistakes: the tweet sent out by the Federal Office for
Migration and Refugees on August 25, for example, which gave the
impression that Germany was opening its doors to all Syrian refugees.
But it is obvious to all that Merkel has lost control of refugee
policy. There is a discrepancy between that which she feels is right
and the side effects these policies are having on her country. It
seems as though she is playing for time, but the game doesn't look to
be turning in her favor.
Angela Merkel wanted
to give Germany a friendly, humanitarian face. And it worked for a
few weeks. But now, the German face has become a grimace. It is no
longer the unburdened, smiling face of Merkel, but that of the grim
Pegida marchers and AfD populists. In fact, AfD has ridden its
refugee opposition to unprecedented opinion poll highs of over 10
percent in recent surveys.
Merkel is
disappointed that her party and the German people ultimately declined
to follow her lead. But she herself failed to link her message of
welcome together with a solid plan for at least halfway controlling
the influx of refugees. That is ultimately what caused the mood in
Germany to shift, what triggered opposition in the rest of Europe and
what propelled the right-wing populists to unprecedented heights.
That is also on Merkel.
The Greatest
Surprise of All
Even Hassan Alasad,
Merkel's selfie partner, now has a different image of Germany than he
did four months ago. Although there is nothing that would get in the
way of him being officially recognized as a refugee -- which would
allow him to work -- he still hasn't received his papers. Each week,
he stands in line in front of the relevant office, but thus far his
efforts have been in vain. The officials have no time for him and are
completely overwhelmed. Were Merkel to drop by for another visit, he
says he would ask her what's wrong in her country.
It could still be
that Merkel will find her way back to her old pragmatism and will
pursue the Plan B of turning back most refugees at the Slovenian
border. Such a plan would allow the continuation of border-free
travel in the Schengen Zone, but it would mean that people would be
stranded in the Balkans or in Greece -- and Germany would contribute
to Europe showing its ugly face.
"I would feel
terribly sorry for her as a person if she were to get into a
situation where she was forced to abandon her convictions and her
past," says Eppelmann. "But if it came to that, she would
step down first."
Among all of the
surprises that Merkel has sprung on the Germans in the past several
months, that would be the greatest one of all.
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