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The End of the Merkel Era
BERLIN
— THE next few weeks will most likely determine the future of Germany’s
approach to the refugee crisis — and perhaps the future of the country
itself.
There are two important dates coming up: a European Union summit meeting on Feb. 18 and 19, which represents Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
last chance to win over the rest of Europe to her open-door refugee
policy, followed by elections in three federal states in Germany on
March 13, which will offer an implicit referendum on Ms. Merkel’s
political course.
Future
generations might remember the past months as the final days of the age
of convergence. On a continental level, “convergence” means the postwar
political development toward an “ever closer union” among the European
nation-states, in the words of the German historian Andreas Wirsching.
Until recently, convergence seemed almost like a law of nature, an
inevitability that could be slowed but never reversed.
For
the last decade — the Merkel era — “convergence” has been applied to
developments within Germany as well. The cultural and economic
differences between East and West Germany, though still significant,
appeared to be shrinking. Society seemed to become ever more tolerant,
for example toward gays and career moms. The children and grandchildren
of Turkish immigrants made it to important positions, rooting them in
mainstream society. The grand coalition between the Social Democrats and
the Christian Democrats seemed to erase what remained of left and
right. As a woman, an East German and a moderate in every respect, Ms.
Merkel was at once the result of and the leading figure in this
development.
Those were the days, and those days are gone.
Powerful
centrifugal forces are now at work. The German party system is being
rearranged. Those who feel they were the losers in this age of increased
diversity — easterners, older white men — are taking their anger to the
Internet and the polls, voting for the far-right Alternative for
Germany party that promises to fight “political correctness” and shut
the border.
Forecast
to get 7 percent to 15 percent of the votes in the coming state
elections, Alternative for Germany is winning voters away from the
once-grand Social Democrats, which is polling as low as 13.5 percent in
the state of Baden-Württemberg, and outpolling the Greens. In Germany,
where governments are typically composed of coalitions of the leading
parties, having the far right in the mix is unsettling, to say the
least.
It’s
not just about politics. On the streets, even among families, there is
anger and unrest. Violence against homes for asylum seekers is on the
rise. The debate online is a heated blur of biased presumptions, where
citizens accuse the government and German news outlets of lying to their
face and turn to Russian state media for information.
The
most evident symptom of disintegration is maybe Angela Merkel herself.
For years, her high approval ratings made her unassailable. Now,
suddenly, 81 percent of Germans
disagree with the government’s management of the migration crisis, and a
poll last week found her personal approval rating had dropped by 12
percentage points, to 46 percent. Ms. Merkel, once the center of
Germany’s centrism, is marginalized, too.
The
narrative of convergence is a teleological one. The “ever closer union”
is not just a term in a treaty, or a sober description of what we have
witnessed in the past decades. It’s what we thought was naturally meant
to be, what Europe was supposed to do.
The
same applies to the ever closer union of German society. For
sort-of-leftish urbanites like myself, the notion that we might be
slipping into a phase of disintegration — not to say regression — is
particularly painful, because it shows we had bought into a lie, the lie
that history is a one-way street, always moving toward a free, liberal,
multicultural society. The anxieties caused by the influx of migrants
show that many Germans no longer share this vision, if they ever did.
Perhaps
Ms. Merkel herself got caught in the same trap. Her wholehearted
embrace of refugees last summer, and her assertion that welcoming them
was a communal European effort, seemed predicated on the belief that
every development was a step forward.
It’s
hard to say what’s going to happen next. Ms. Merkel probably won’t
pivot completely, not this time, but in her usual, cautious way, she has
already started to shed the image of “Mother Merkel.” At a regional
party convention on Jan. 30, she directly addressed the refugees: “When
there is peace again in Syria, when ISIS is defeated in Iraq, we expect
you to return.”
Meanwhile,
one of Ms. Merkel’s closest allies and a leading candidate in the March
elections, Julia Klöckner, has offered a proposal on refugees that
would essentially place a cap on the number of people admitted to the
country — something Ms. Merkel has herself refused to do. Ms. Klöckner’s
plan is widely seen as a Merkel trial balloon. But given the severity
of the tremors shaking Germany, even quotas are unlikely to settle
things.
Professor
Wirsching argues that crises have interrupted convergence, but have
also ultimately created new lines of cooperation that have eventually
brought the Continent closer together. And maybe, in the long run, the
same can be said about Germany. I just don’t see that day coming soon.
