On Sunday, voters in the eastern German state of Brandenburg will vote for a new regional parliament. Germany’s far-right anti-immigrant Alternative, or AfD, could win a majority of votes. On 1 September the AfD won the German general election for the first time, coming first in the eastern state of Thuringia. In Brandenburg polls show the AfD leading by 28%.
Undermining AfD support, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s left-led government on Monday introduced immigration checks at all German borders. He also wants to increase the deportation of people whose asylum applications are unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the opposition wants the borders to be completely closed to those seeking asylum.
This is a very different country than Angela Merkel’s Germany. Almost ten years ago the then chancellor refused to close the borders to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution in Syria and Afghanistan. “Wir schaffen das”, or “We can do it”, he famously said.
In 2015 and 2016 Germany took in around 1.5 million refugees and migrants, most of them from the Middle East. They are greeted at train stations with “Welcome” signs and smiling volunteers handing out food and toys. A new German term was coined, “Willkommenskultur” or “welcoming culture”, and many Germans took pride in the country’s new identity as a safe haven for refugees.
Today, many of those refugees have become Germans themselves. A record 200,000 people become German citizens by 2023. The largest group was from Syria. These are the New Germans.
The “generation of 2015” is described as highly motivated by professionals. Many could have stayed in Lebanon and Turkey, but headed to Germany to make a new life. They are on average younger than natives – 26 years old compared to the German average of 47 – and statistically more likely to be in the workforce: 84% of Syrian men who arrived in 2015 are working, compared to 81% of German-born men.
But with the rise of the AfD and a strong anti-immigrant voice in mainstream politics, the “welcoming culture” of 2015 is hard to find today.
Fewer refugees are now coming to Germany, with new arrivals down 22% this year compared to the same period in 2023. But 3.48 million refugees are now living in the country – more than at any time since the 1950s. A third comes from Ukraine.
Some councils in the area say they are struggling to cope with demand and funding. The far-right and the AfD say the numbers are too high. The left blames the finance department’s obsession with rating books and refusing to take on new debt. Add that to a sharp increase in military spending after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and there are fears in Germany that money and resources are tight. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s controversial and divided coalition government does not help voters feel secure in the country’s leadership.
So how do New Germans feel about this change in Germany?
Parvin was one of those who arrived in 2015, traveling for months, mostly on foot, from Afghanistan to Germany with her three-year-old son and disabled nephew. Border guards were shot at and he feared for his life when the overcrowded boat he was on began to sink in the Mediterranean.
Now she recently got her German citizenship and this summer she is training to be a social worker. A refugee success story, you might think. But he says the situation is getting worse for immigrants since 2015. “I don’t feel welcome here,” he tells me.
“The increase in rights and hatred towards refugees is mainly due to the negative image of refugees in the German media,” he said. “If one refugee does something bad, the media makes it really big. And then people think that all refugees are bad. “
The latest political debate on immigration started in August, after three stabbings in the city of Solingen, in which three people died. The suspect is from Syria who sought asylum from the authorities who wanted to deport him. The following week saw a spate of knife attacks across Germany excluding refugees – including two separate stabbings in Berlin in which women were killed by their partners. These cases did not make headlines.
The far-right AfD quickly used the Solingen stabbing as part of its election campaign in the September state elections in Thuringia. Two hours after the attack AfD regional leader Björn Höcke, who has been officially described by German courts as a nationalist and fined for using a Nazi slogan at meetings, wrote on X “vote change 1.9” alongside the hashtag Solingen.
In Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, I meet Sultana, as she organizes an anti-rightist protest. He fled to Germany ten years ago from Afghanistan, when he was 10 years old. He is now going to university to study law, he speaks German natively and is active in politics, often facing large protests. But he cannot vote. He has applied for German citizenship but is still waiting for a response.
Sultana’s mother Latifa tells me that she fears that, after rebuilding their lives here in Germany, the family may have to flee again. This time, to escape far to the right.
“We are incredibly scared and we know we are being threatened. But you have to understand that this has been going on for many years,” said Sultana, adding that the problem is not only the AfD, but the racism that she, and many others, often face.
“I speak German, I dream of German, my whole life is focused on being German. I wonder what else I should do, to be seen as German,” he said with tears in his eyes.
For Sultana the answer is to be more active in politics. “There is nothing we can do. Many immigrants do not have citizenship, so they do not have the right to vote. But we have voices and we want to take these voices to the streets saying: we are here and we live here!”
But some New Germans are considering leaving altogether. As soon as she got her German passport, Parvin was finally able to visit her sister in London for the first time, in August. Now that she is a qualified social worker, she is even considering moving to the UK. He tells me that he felt welcome there.
A study published last week by an organization that examines human migration, DeZIM, revealed that a quarter of people from other countries, most of whom are German citizens, are thinking of moving to other countries because of political upheaval. About 10 percent said they had concrete plans to leave Germany.
The strange thing is that the government wants to recruit workers from Germany. But hostile propaganda about immigration may not only deter people from coming, but also push away those who come to pick up New Germans who are already living successful lives here.
Damien’s documentary about the New Germans will be broadcast on the BBC World Service and will be available to listen to here.
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