Standing up to old Germany: Germans have made their strongest statement against xenophobia

The mood shift in the three weeks since then has been nothing if not astounding. Thousands of volunteer helpers have inundated groups working with asylum seekers. Refugee hostels have been overwhelmed with donations, to the point that some have even had to turn down offers of clothes for lack of space. And newcomers arriving from Syria via Hungary and Austria are being greeted with long lines of clapping, cheering Germans offering stuffed animals to the children and food to everyone.

“We have seen an unbelievable willingness to help,” says Birte Steigert of Aktion Deutschland Hilft, an association of German aid groups. “There has been so much that we are really having difficulties channeling it. It has really overwhelmed us.” She adds that the group posted a call for monetary donations just two weeks ago, but has already collected €2.8 million.

Indeed, the atmosphere in the country is almost one of defiance. It is as if Germans saw a new wave of xenophobic violence approaching and decided as one to stand up and put a stop to it. Even the country’s mega-circulation tabloid Bild, which has a long history of virulent xenophobia — it ran a series on “criminal foreigners” in 2008 — has changed its tune. It recently joined other papers in Germany with a “How You Can Help Asylum Seekers” article of its own and since then has published story after story oozing understanding for the plight of those fleeing violence.

The tens of thousands of asylum seekers making their way to Europe this late summer, many of them from war-torn Syria and Iraq, have taken notice. For those travelling the gruelling Western Balkan route via Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary, Germany has become the destination of choice. Many even chant “Germany! Germany!” upon arrival in Budapest and some carry along pictures of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But it isn’t Merkel who is leading the pro-refugee sentiment in Germany. Rather, it is people like Miriam Notowicz, a 43-year-old digital communications consultant in Berlin who began volunteering at an emergency shelter in the district of Karlshorst three weeks ago. She has been observing the situation from afar for some time, she says, but decided to get involved when she saw how many people were coming and how much support they needed. She also says that the neo-Nazi attacks in August were a factor as well.

Initially, she was part of a group that was on call 24 hours a day to help refugees who had found their way to Berlin but didn’t know where to go. Then she assisted shelter operators when large groups showed up and needed to be registered. She and other volunteers identify who needs help the quickest — such as families with small children who arrive in the middle of the night — so they can be registered and admitted immediately.

“There is an emergency situation here in Germany this year,” Notowicz says. “Suddenly there were thousands of people here and it made volunteer help necessary. Also because the state has simply been overwhelmed.”

In the meantime, it is the volunteers themselves who have become overwhelmed. The wave of material donations from everyday Germans has been such that many ad-hoc neighbourhood aid organisations — in Berlin, suddenly, it seems that every district has one — have begun pleading with the local community to stop bringing in certain items. “It is almost like people are making a statement,” says Steigert. “Like they really want to show that they feel solidarity with the refugees.”
Politicians, perhaps not surprisingly, have been doing their best to ride the wave. Chancellor Merkel, who is famous for cautiously biding her time before taking a stance, has been outspoken in both her condemnation of anti-refugee violence — sadly not always a given in her centre-right party — and her support for helping a significant number of refugees. Her vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel of the centre-left Social Democrats, said on Tuesday that he thinks Germany can easily absorb up to 500,000 refugees a year. And even conservatives in Bavaria, who are often particularly unyielding in their rejection of immigration and multi-culturalism, have been at pains to carefully calibrate their rhetoric.

It remains to be seen for how long the euphoria might last. There is no shortage of Cassandras eagerly prognosticating a backlash. And the attacks have continued. On Sunday night, for example, two fires broke out in refugee hostels in Germany, with five people hurt in the second blaze from smoke inhalation and from injuries sustained by jumping out of windows to escape the flames. “Dark Germany,” as pundits have begun calling it, is refusing to go quietly.

But the story’s front-page half-life was brief. After all there were videos to show of Germans cheering the arrival of refugee buses and trains from Budapest. There were stories to tell of the small-town mayor in the notoriously xenophobic state of Saxony demanding that officials send more asylum seekers to his village.

And there was work to be done, donations to sort, refugees to help, toys to hand out. “In my head I am there 24 hours a day,” says volunteer Notowicz, referring to the hostel where she volunteers. “There is always something to do.”

Charles Hawley is editor of Spiegel International, the English website of Germany’s leading newsmagazine