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Berlin Briefing

A weekly look at German politics

09.05.2023 | 19:00 UTC

In this edition: As refugee numbers rise, politicians quarrel over who pays the bills; why Turks in Germany support Erdogan; a Berlin police glitch may scupper the Ukrainian president’s plans for a trip to Germany… and a new documentary recounts the little-known story of Holocaust survivors freed from concentration camps only to end up in US Army camps for displaced persons.

Willkommen to DW’s Berlin Briefing

By DW’s Analysis Team

Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to hold a Flüchtlingsgipfel (summit on refugees) with the heads of government of Germany’s 16 states on Wednesday. On the agenda is how best to handle the growing number of refugees arriving in the country.

The federal government is unwilling to shoulder more of the financial burden, writes DW’s Oliver Pieper.

The number of asylum seekers — mainly from Syria and Afghanistan — is rising markedly. Their number adds to around one million Ukrainian refugees who have come to Germany since the Russian invasion in February 2022.

Now, opinion polls show rising skepticism among voters: A majority says immigration brings more disadvantages than advantages, and they’d like Germany to take in fewer refugees than it currently does.

Scholz’s center-left coalition of his Social Democrats, the neoliberal FDP and the Greens is losing support, while the populist far-right Alternative for Germany is gaining ground. The latest survey has the AfD almost tallying with the Greens.

The Greens are traditionally Germany’s most immigration-friendly party, but they have so far been rather tight-lipped in the resurging refugee debate.

Their Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck has nosedived in opinion polls. This may be down to his ministry’s plans to speed up the phase-out of natural gas heating, which has homeowners worried.
Now Habeck’s ministry’s top bureaucrat and renowned expert on the issue of transitioning to renewables has owned up to having made a “mistake” — by violating compliance regulations.

The opposition has pounced on the “scandal.”

A science teacher showing pupils a model

Nepotism or smear campaign?

DW’s Jens Thurau explains how the opposition is rejoicing at the chance to find a stain on the white vest of the Greens, the party of the moral high ground.

campaigning and elections

The center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), who led German governments for most of the past decades, are currently outranking all others in the nationwide polls.

And they have identified the Greens as their main adversary. CDU chairman Friedrich Merz has again come out to say there is no need to rush the transition to renewables: “The world won’t end tomorrow. If we set the right course in the next ten years, we will be on the right track,” he told national weekly Die Zeit. And the CDU’s more populist Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) has kicked off its state election campaign by confirming its lead candidate Markus Söder, who is ramping up his full-on attack on the Greens and their “wokeness.”

Meanwhile, voters up north in Bremen, Germany’s smallest state, are set to buck the trend when they vote in state elections this Sunday: The ruling SPD — currently in government with the Greens and the post-communist Left Party — is polling strong at 30%.

Another election on May 14 is sure to steal the media spotlight: The election in Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking reelection after over 20 years in power.

Almost 3 million people living in Germany have Turkish roots, and well over one million of them have Turkish citizenship and are of voting age. Erdogan has long enjoyed wide support among Turks in Germany. And pollsters expect this to continue.

young Turkish woman being interviewed on a Berlin street

Why Germany’s Turks like Erdogan

Voting in the Turkish presidential and parliamentary election ends this Tuesday. Religious and politically conservative immigrants from rural regions in Anatolia make up a large part of the Turkish diaspora in Germany.

commemoration and remembrance … and security

This week sees commemoration events to mark the end of World War Two in Europe.

Western allies mark the occasion on May 8, while Russia celebrates the Soviet Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany on May 9.

Ukraine, formerly a part of the Soviet Union, this year opted to commemorate the end of the war along with the Western allies for the first time. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that his nation would from now on celebrate May 9 as Europe Day “together with all of free Europe.”

The western German city of Aachen plans to award the Ukrainian leader the prestigious Charlemagne Prize on Sunday. Organizers of the event are making preparations for Zelenskyy to possibly attend the ceremony in person.

Berlin police security glitch

Zelenskyy’s trips abroad are usually kept secret until the last minute. But a Berlin daily published leaked plans for a potential visit by Zelenskyy on May 13 and 14, causing major embarrassment for the police in the capital, writes DW’s Mark Hallam.

history

When World War Two ended in 1945, around 50,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust freed from extermination and concentration camps found themselves with nowhere to return to.

Many then lived in camps for Displaced Persons run mainly by the US Army. One of the largest such camps was in the town of Landsberg am Lech, near Munich.