The End of an Era: Merkel's Resignation

31 December, 2015. Germany is ushering in the new year, and its citizens are littered throughout major cities, watching fireworks bloom as the clock slowly turns and 2016 draws nearer. In Cologne, this was also the case, and Germans gathered to in city squares and Christmas markets to spend time with their loved ones. Then, in front of the Cologne Central Station, firecrackers are thrown into a crowd. The noise and smoke creates panic, and there is pandemonium. The ones who threw the firecrackers - eyewitness accounts report a crowd of bystanders, at least 500 large - rushed in to exploit the pandemonium. In most cases, they simply robbed their victims and ran. In other cases, they groped their victims to distract them while they took their valuables, and then ran. In some cases, they dragged their victims into street corners and alleys, and raped them. 

Protesters in Cologne after mass assaults; "No violence against women" (Oliver Berg/Picture-Alliance/DPA)

The mass sexual assault and robbery in a major German city, dubbed the Silvesternachthorror (New Year's Eve Horror), was not covered by German press in the days after the incident. This caused a large outcry, as while the mass sexual assaults in Cologne were the largest in scale and therefore the most prominent in German social media, similar incidents had occurred in other cities: Hamburg, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Bielefeld, and Dortmund, amongst others. Famously, the police chief of Cologne publicly identified the suspects from eyewitness accounts as of Arab/African origin, while the Minister-President of Rhineland-Westphalia (the state in which Cologne resides) slammed him, insisting the lack of evidence for such a claim. All this, while German society itself was grappling to understand the the travesty and tragedy that was the Silvesternachthorror.

This singular event represents an inflection point in German politics. With the Syrian refugee crisis in full swing in the preceding years, Germany had made an international statement with both the Merkel administration's open-doors policy, and the Willkommenskultur (welcome culture) shown by society at large. Videos of Germans cheering on refugees arriving by train went viral, and there emerged an uneasy sense of national pride; rare for a country in which national pride is taboo in general. Yet, Germany was grappling with another large problem at the time: the Turkish workers that they had given work permits decades ago, and largely ignored on the assumption of their eventual repatriation, refused to return home. In the process, they had established parallel societies, since the government had not cared to attempt any integration of these workers. Thus, when Germany opened herself up to refugees, the culture clash and uneasiness between the traditional ethnic German community and its competing Muslim communities only festered.

From the beginning, Angela Merkel and her refugee policies have been inextricably linked. German pundits hearken back to a few key scenes early in the crisis, such as one in which a young Syrian girl asks Merkel whether she would be sent back to Syria, causing Merkel to be visibly shaken. This is despite the fact that protection of refugees is a key principle enshrined in the German constitution. In tying herself to her refugee policies, Merkel may have intended it to be her legacy as the moral pragmatist of contemporary Germany. Unfortunately, it became her own personal stumbling block.

Merkel being greeted by a refugee family (Bundesregierung/Kugler)

Being someone who aspires towards German residency and possible eventual citizenship, I have been following German politics for a long time. In October 2014, the movement Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung Abendlandes (PEGIDA, Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisization of the Occident) was founded in Dresden, in response to the mess and violence that resulted from mixing Arabic peoples of different cultures in Germany. PEGIDA was the first German movement with a far-right platform in contemporary history to gain large appeal, both domestically and internationally. Previously, German nationalism had been restricted to an assumedly neo-Nazi party called the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschland (NPD, National Democratic Party of Germany). Yet, in the new and volatile political climate, the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, Alternatives for Germany) rode the coattails of PEGIDA and rose to prominence. 

This far-right party was unlike traditional far-right parties. Where the traditional far-right appealed explicitly to neo-Nazis, the AfD cloaked their talking points as a defence of German civic values and social order, in response to the refugee crisis. Where the traditional far-right staged violent riots with hooligans and skinheads, the AfD wore suits and ties and appealed to the educated German middle-class who felt threatened. Where the traditional far-right openly supports reactionary politics, the AfD's platform infuses a number of decidedly progressive policies, like better healthcare and social services for citizens. In fact, one of its founders and leaders, Alice Weidel, is famously lesbian, which is a soft-sell to LGBT voters who harbour right-wing beliefs but tend towards centrism and the left because of better support for them. 

AfD party rally in Hannover, 2015 (Getty)

In the 2013 federal election, the AfD was unable to net even 5% of the popular vote; a minimum requirement to be able to send representatives to the Bundestag. Yet, in the 2017 federal election, the AfD shot up the board to become the 3rd largest party in the Bundestag, after the centre-right Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU, Christian Democratic Union) and centre-left Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD, Social Democratic Party of Germany). This was not a sudden occurance; since 2013, as dissatisfaction with the refugee policies increased and Merkel's prestige fell, voters began migrating to both poles. Where left-wing voters had a wealth of parties to pick from, right-wing voters only had the AfD.

And so it went. One by one, state elections were held in the lead-up to the final grand slam on 24 September, 2017. State by state, the CDU bled voters to the AfD. Merkel clung to her chancellorship, even as her party's share of the popular vote dropped by 12%. But the 2017 federal elections were the start of her problems. 

You see, there is no party that holds a true super-majority in Germany. No matter which party is given the reins of government, they will have to rule within a coalition. With the AfD as the third largest opposition party in the Bundestag, Merkel did not want to give them the prestige and power of being the largest opposition party by allying with the SPD - a coalition referred to in German political parlance as the Grand Coalition. The SPD itself declared that they would not seek to partake in a renewal of the Grand Coalition with Merkel's CDU. Seeing a reasonably pliant and centrist SPD leading the opposition as favorable instead of the AfD leading it, Merkel decided to take a gamble and reach out for the Greens and the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP, Free Democratic Party), a libertarian party focusing mostly on free-market solutions to economic issues. This coalition - dubbed the Jamaica Coalition for the party colors of black, green, and yellow - was expected to revitalize the German political scene, providing fresh perspective to issues that the voters clearly were clamoring for. German news media and pundits were cautiously optimistic about this development.

The Jamaica coalition, run over by tires (Ralph Peters/imago)

In retrospect, it should have been obvious that the Jamaica Coalition would come tumbling down. The moment she declared on 9 October that she would invite the leaders of the FDP and Greens to the negotiating table, they scrambled to assemble what parts of their platform they were willing to sacrifice to be in the room where it happens, and what parts they wanted to push through at all costs. As it turns out, the preliminary talks were a complete failure, as the three parties had competing visions on a number of key administrative issues that the government was expected to tackle: most notably, migration and climate issues. On 20 November, the FDP formally withdrew, citing a lack of common vision or trust in the coalition. The Jamaica Coalition was over. 

With no other alternative, the CDU and the SPD essentially turned to each other and groaned, for there was no other recourse to form a ruling coalition. The SPD held a special party conference on 6 December, in which a majority of party delegates voted in favor of beginning negotiations with the CDU. To the chagrin of the party elite, the youth wing of the SPD staged a protest against this move, which showed the fracture within the party itself. Nevertheless, the SPD proceeded to continue its loveless marriage with the CDU, and negotiations were held through January and February. The Grand Coalition was finally formally re-established and took office on 14 March 2018, a full half year after election night. However, the coalition-building process and internal instability of both the CDU and the SPD was truly the straw that broke the camel's back. All across social media, Germans cried that the time was up for Mama Merkel. It is in this backdrop that Merkel announced in October 2018 that she would not seek re-election as party chairwoman in 2021 for the next round of federal elections.