German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s momentous decision five years to welcome into Germany an unprecedented number of refugees from the Middle East and Northern Africa triggered political repercussions across much of the world. Only in Germany has it also caused pop cultural ferment. One bestselling book about Merkel’s decision has now inspired a hugely popular television movie. Any attempt to understand the legacy of the summer of 2015 must reckon with both works—and the crucial differences between them. The distortions of one are corrected by the artistry of the other, and they point to the same learning process that awaits the broader German public as it struggles to define the legacy of the events in question.
The book was published in 2017 by Robin Alexander, the political editor of the conservative daily Die Welt, under the title Die Getriebenen: Merkel und die Flüchtlingspolitik: Report aus dem Innern der Macht (The Driven Ones: Merkel and Refugee Policy: Report from the Halls of Power). It depicts Merkel as a naive and indecisive leader who, out of fear that the world might reproach the German people for slamming borders shut in the face of dark-skinned women and children, opted to allow the refugees in Hungary and Austria trekking toward Germany to pass into the country where they could apply for political asylum. She lacked the nerve, Alexander implies, to do the right thing as a self-confident German leader—namely to close the border with Austria, damn the consequences. This is the narrative that has settled into consensus among many Germans, especially in her own Christian Democratic Union party.
