It's hard to imagine how Germany's views on refugees have changed over the past decade. The country, whose hardening stance on immigration sent shockwaves through Europe in September, was once proud of its generous refugee policy in 2015. When, in the summer of 2015, Angela Merkel's Germany opened its doors to tens of thousands of refugees from Iraq and Syria, calling on Europe to show more solidarity, many Germans went personally to Berlin or Munich train stations to welcome them, offering pretzels, chocolate or sweets.
In response to local officials calling for national support on regional radio stations, some volunteered to host refugees in their homes. "The public support is unwavering! It's amazing!" tweeted the stunned Munich police on September 1, 2015. Even the tabloid Bild, which had campaigned to expel Greece from Europe a few years earlier, raised funds for the refugees and celebrated the Germans who were helping them.
Merkel, whose selfies with refugees went viral, became Europe's moral compass. There was even talk of awarding her the Nobel Peace Prize. Her open-door policy garnered broad support within the country, as well as among politicians and the business community. "At the time, we only had parliamentary groups that broadly supported Angela Merkel's position, or at least did not strongly oppose it," recalled Ursula Münch, director of the Academy for Political Education in Tutzing, near Munich. "The far right had no political presence. The only exception at the time was the CSU [the conservative Christian Social Union in Bavaria, a state at the forefront of refugee reception]."
The Social Democrat Vice-Chancellor at the time, Sigmar Gabriel, sported a "Welcome Refugees" pin on his jacket, and claimed that the Germans could "certainly manage about half a million [refugees a year] for several years ... maybe even more." These same refugees could "become the basis of the next German economic miracle," predicted Dieter Zetsche, CEO of carmaker Daimler. Economists were cheering on TV, explaining that these refugees would help fund the pensions of the baby boomers.
A wave of attacks in Cologne
The honeymoon did not last long. Local officials, responsible for the majority of refugee reception efforts following the distribution of migrants to different regions of the country, were quick to point out the lack of resources to cope with the influx of asylum seekers. On a single day, September 12, 2015, more than 13,000 refugees arrived at Munich's train station. Even in small towns, Germans saw families crammed into warehouses, gymnasiums and train stations. "Wir schaffen das" ("We'll get there"), assured Merkel.
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