May Day demonstration in Hamburg "Never mind the papers". Rasande Tyskar/Flickr. Some rights reserved. 800,000 is the much-cited number of refugees that Germany can expect to receive this year. Chancellor Angela Merkel has clearly recognised that such an unprecedented influx will fundamentally change Germany and Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel further surmises that Germany may well receive over 500,000 people per year over the course of the next few years. This, he admits, will be the country’s biggest challenge since die Wende: the most common term for the ‘change’ or ‘turning point’ in German society following the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification.
Is the societal change that Germany now faces tantamount to die zweite Wende, or ‘second turning point’? A recent New York Times cartoon suggests as much, depicting ‘the fall of the wall all over again’ with Merkel and jubilant Germans welcoming refugees through a demolished wall between the global North and South. If the current inflow of people represents a social transformation of proportion similar to German reunification, what might such change entail?
Social transformation in Germany
Following the reunification of Germany, necessarily far-reaching political, economic and social restructuring ensued. Twenty-five years after German reunification, however, the process is still not complete: the former East and West regions of Germany still significantly diverge socio-economically and in terms of public attitudes. Transformations following from the current, large-scale immigration will also be far-reaching and will take decades to unfold. It will also likely have highly divergent outcomes across German society.
