Earlier this week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited Potsdam, the capital of the eastern state of Brandenburg, on a somewhat respite visit after a high-profile diplomatic event in Egypt, where he attended the signing of US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan.
The itinerary included a boat trip down the Havel River, which connects the German capital with Potsdam, and a stop at a kindergarten. The trip was going smoothly – until Merz held a brief press conference, where she was asked questions about Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt’s tough stance on immigration and the rise of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in light of its strong approval ratings.
The party – which is partly classified as right-wing extremist – received 34% of the vote in Brandenburg at the end of September, far ahead of the Social Democrats (SPD), which govern the state in coalition with no other party.
In an approving tone, Merz said that the number of refugees fleeing Germany has declined since she took office in May, “but we still have this problem in the city, and that is why the interior minister is working to carry out mass deportations.”
Fierce protest over ‘racial’ remarks
What did Merz mean by “the problem in the urban landscape”? Was he referring to cities suffering from housing shortages and high unemployment, or was he actually referring to urban areas with large immigrant populations, which are more diverse than rural areas of Germany?
Although vague, his words have drawn sharp criticism from Germany’s opposition parties and even some members of his own center-right Christian Democrat (CDU) party.
Dozens of politicians from the opposition Green Party have written to Merz in a letter demanding a public apology for “racist, discriminatory, hurtful and indecent” comments to people affected by racism and marginalization, the German Press Agency reported on Friday.
“They are here in the first, second or third generation, yet you deny them their Germanness and their belonging to Germany – simply because of their looks, their origin or their name,” the letter said.
“If the Chancellor anticipates the need for further deportations from the city, he is sending a dangerous message,” Green Party leader Felix Banaszak said, adding that making such claims is outrageous and dangerous.
Sören Pelman, leader of the Socialist Left Party parliamentary group, urged Merz to apologize. “The glaring omission in your words was not only wrong – it has placed another thorn in our democracy.”
The head of state of Saxony supported Merz
Other politicians expressed support for Merz, among them Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer, who is also a member of the CDU.
“Newspapers report countless incidents of violence,” Kretschmer said, adding that “there are also people about whom we then find out that they really need to leave the country.” He said it was not enough to reduce the number of people coming to Germany, but efforts should be made to “enforce our standards, our values.”
Was Merz, as Kretschmer appears to have said, talking specifically about the many people who have come to Germany since 2015, many of whom were from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq?
Berlin Mayor Kai Wegener, also a member of Merz’s CDU, has frequently clashed with the chancellor. he told the German daily daily Mirror: “Berlin is a diverse, international and cosmopolitan city. This will always be reflected in the city’s landscape.”
While Wegner said Berlin certainly has problems with “violence, litter and crime”, it is wrong to pin any of these problems on a single nationality.
government blame criticism
On Wednesday, German government spokesman Stephan Cornelius tried to calm critics, saying, “I think you are reading too much into it. The Chancellor has expressed support for the new government’s new stance on migration, even though he was speaking in his role as party chairman, which he made clearly clear.”
After all, Merz not only leads the German coalition government but also heads the conservative CDU party. Cornelius also said Merz had always made it clear that immigration law should not be about excluding people but about appropriately regulating immigration.
Did Merz use the term “cityscape” intentionally or did it simply slip in? In any case, Bavarian State Premier Markus Söder of the CDU’s sister party, the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), also used the term when he gave an interview. munich wed At the end of September the newspaper said that Germany should increase deportations to Afghanistan and Syria to change the German “cityscape”.
This article was originally written in German.