Politics
10 years on from Angela Merkel's three little words: Wir schaffen das!
A decade has passed since a phrase, uttered almost incidentally in a tense press conference, came to define an era and fundamentally alter the geopolitical and social landscape of Germany. On August 31, 2015, as hundreds of thousands of refugees, primarily fleeing the Syrian conflict, sought sanctuary at its borders, Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed a quiet, resolute confidence: “Wir schaffen das” — “We will manage.” Intended as a statement of pragmatic assurance rather than a sweeping political slogan, the phrase, as Merkel later reflected in her memoirs, unexpectedly “blew up in her face.” It transcended its immediate context to become a lasting, polarizing symbol of her chancellorship, a benchmark against which the nation’s capacity for compassion and integration would be measured for years to come.
The immediate context was a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions. In 2015 and 2016 alone, Germany received over 1.1 million asylum seekers, testing the administrative and social fabric of the nation to its limits. Merkel’s declaration was a call to action, mobilizing a remarkable initial wave of civic engagement—the *Willkommenskultur* (welcome culture)—where ordinary citizens volunteered at registration centres and donated supplies. This period represented a profound moment of national self-perception, casting Germany in the role of a benevolent, moral leader on the world stage, consciously confronting its history by offering open arms to those in need. The government implemented policies to process and house the new arrivals, betting on Germany’s economic strength and societal cohesion to successfully absorb the population.
However, the initial unity and optimism soon gave way to a complex and often fraught reality. The immense logistical challenges of integration—language acquisition, education, and housing—were compounded by cultural friction and security concerns, notably after several high-profile terrorist attacks carried out by individuals who had entered with the flow of migrants. This backlash fueled the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a once-fringe far-right party that harnessed public anxiety and anti-immigrant sentiment to secure its first seats in the Bundestag in 2017. The political centre, long dominated by Merkel’s CDU and the SPD, found itself under sustained pressure, forcing a gradual hardening of immigration policies and discourse across the spectrum. “Wir schaffen das” was increasingly weaponized by critics as a symbol of naive idealism that had unleashed uncontrollable forces.
A decade on, the phrase remains a potent and divisive fault line in German politics, as illustrated by the rhetoric of Merkel’s own political heirs. Friedrich Merz, the current leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has explicitly repudiated the legacy. During his campaign and again in a summer 2024 interview, he starkly declared, “We will not manage,” and “We have obviously not succeeded,” directly linking contemporary challenges, including a recent series of attacks, to his predecessor’s policy. This deliberate distancing underscores a fierce battle over Merkel’s legacy and a rightward shift within the CDU as it seeks to recapture voters from the AfD. The political debate is no longer about welcoming refugees but about control, limits, and the perceived failures of multiculturalism.
Yet, a purely political lens offers an incomplete picture. The tangible outcomes of the last decade present a mixed but significant record of achievement. Over two million people have found a new home in Germany since 2015, with a further one million Ukrainians arriving following Russia’s invasion. While integration is a generational project, many newcomers have entered the labour market, helping to mitigate Germany’s acute skilled labour shortage. Countless individual stories of success exist alongside persistent challenges, including higher-than-average unemployment rates among refugee communities and ongoing social segregation. From an economic perspective, the narrative is not one of collapse but of difficult, ongoing management—a testament to the state’s resilience, even if the social “managing” remains incomplete.
The long-term societal impact is perhaps the most profound and ambiguous legacy. Germany is undeniably a more diverse nation than it was in 2015. Cities are more visibly multicultural, and the national self-concept has been irrevocably changed, forcing a permanent and often uncomfortable conversation about identity, citizenship, and belonging. The period shattered any myth of homogeneous German society and accelerated debates about modern immigration law. While this has created tension, it has also sparked a new dynamism in culture, cuisine, and community life. The experience has proven that Germany *could* manage the initial influx in a logistical sense, but the question of whether it has truly managed to build a cohesive new societal consensus remains open.
Ten years later, “Wir schaffen das” endures not as a simple question of success or failure, but as the defining statement of Merkel’s era—a Rorschach test for the German psyche. For some, it represents a high-water mark of ethical leadership and humanistic courage; for others, a catastrophic miscalculation that destabilized the nation. The phrase captures the immense tension between Germany’s post-war humanitarian ideals and the complex realities of global migration in the 21st century. Its anniversary prompts a necessary, sober reflection: managing an immediate crisis is a monumental task, but the deeper work of building lasting understanding and unity in a changed nation is the true, ongoing challenge that Germany continues to face.
