Interesting article about the migrant crisis.
In the Vortex of the Migration Crisis\
PETER BERGER
During the last few weeks I was in Austria and Germany. Both countries are consumed by the migration crisis. The media are full of reports and views about it, and most conversations sooner rather than later return to it. Of course the crisis affects all of Europe, but these two countries are in its vortex, though with significant differences between them. What is unfolding in Germany is a moving moral drama, with the person of Chancellor Angela Merkel at its center. There is much discussion about what motivated her to trigger the crisis by opening the country to masses of migrants, mostly from the war-torn regions of the Middle East adding up to over a million in 2015.
As far as I can tell, she had no conceivable political motive—indeed she put her political position at risk. The most likely motive was simply compassion, perhaps triggered by a scene (caught on television) when she talked with a young refugee girl who tearfully asked Merkel to let her stay in Germany. Merkel was obviously moved, didn’t know what to say, and just stroked the child’s back. [I do not know how far religion was involved in Merkel’s reaction—her growing up in a Lutheran parsonage in Communist East Germany finally showing. Like most European politicians, Merkel doesn’t normally “do God”. But in a recent interview she said, surprisingly, that she prays before important decisions.] She is beginning to pay the price for this one: There is increasing political opposition to her open-door policy, by a rising anti-immigrant party (the “Alternative for Germany”) and even within her own coalition (the head of the Bavarian party openly opposes her), and she is also being criticized for making a deal with the unsavory Turkish president to help stop the migrant flow through Turkey in exchange for large sums of money and other concessions by the European Union.
Austria did accept some 90,000 migrants (not too bad for a small country—the United Kingdom offered to take 20,000). But Austria mainly served as a transit stop for the huge masses heading for the promised land, chanting “Deutschland! Deutschland!” Yet the crisis has nevertheless upended Austrian politics. The country has been governed by a coalition of the two traditionally dominant parties, the Social Democrats and the Conservatives. That coalition is now threatened by the unexpectedly growing Freedom Party, which started years ago as a catchment for nostalgic ex-Nazis but has now made more respectable noises (like the National Front in France). While I was in the country the party head was on a very visible visit to Israel. But the main message of the Freedom Party is ferocious opposition to immigration, especially of Muslims. Of course there are quite rational economic and cultural anxieties to which such parties appeal (Americans may think of the people who love Donald Trump). However, beyond the deplorable excesses that find political expression here, there is a legitimate issue that ought to be addressed: the question of the limits of pluralism. And here Austria is different from Germany and many other European countries: Its historical memory is still haunted by another very pluralistic entity: that of the Habsburg empire, especially in the last fifty years of its existence. At least in the Austrian half of the monarchy (in the other half the not so tacit project was a Hungarian nation state) there were some serious efforts to construct a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state. History rarely repeats itself, but that long-vanished experiment provokes reflections relevant to our own time.
Continue reading at:
In the Vortex of the Migration Crisis?
In the Vortex of the Migration Crisis\
PETER BERGER
During the last few weeks I was in Austria and Germany. Both countries are consumed by the migration crisis. The media are full of reports and views about it, and most conversations sooner rather than later return to it. Of course the crisis affects all of Europe, but these two countries are in its vortex, though with significant differences between them. What is unfolding in Germany is a moving moral drama, with the person of Chancellor Angela Merkel at its center. There is much discussion about what motivated her to trigger the crisis by opening the country to masses of migrants, mostly from the war-torn regions of the Middle East adding up to over a million in 2015.
As far as I can tell, she had no conceivable political motive—indeed she put her political position at risk. The most likely motive was simply compassion, perhaps triggered by a scene (caught on television) when she talked with a young refugee girl who tearfully asked Merkel to let her stay in Germany. Merkel was obviously moved, didn’t know what to say, and just stroked the child’s back. [I do not know how far religion was involved in Merkel’s reaction—her growing up in a Lutheran parsonage in Communist East Germany finally showing. Like most European politicians, Merkel doesn’t normally “do God”. But in a recent interview she said, surprisingly, that she prays before important decisions.] She is beginning to pay the price for this one: There is increasing political opposition to her open-door policy, by a rising anti-immigrant party (the “Alternative for Germany”) and even within her own coalition (the head of the Bavarian party openly opposes her), and she is also being criticized for making a deal with the unsavory Turkish president to help stop the migrant flow through Turkey in exchange for large sums of money and other concessions by the European Union.
Austria did accept some 90,000 migrants (not too bad for a small country—the United Kingdom offered to take 20,000). But Austria mainly served as a transit stop for the huge masses heading for the promised land, chanting “Deutschland! Deutschland!” Yet the crisis has nevertheless upended Austrian politics. The country has been governed by a coalition of the two traditionally dominant parties, the Social Democrats and the Conservatives. That coalition is now threatened by the unexpectedly growing Freedom Party, which started years ago as a catchment for nostalgic ex-Nazis but has now made more respectable noises (like the National Front in France). While I was in the country the party head was on a very visible visit to Israel. But the main message of the Freedom Party is ferocious opposition to immigration, especially of Muslims. Of course there are quite rational economic and cultural anxieties to which such parties appeal (Americans may think of the people who love Donald Trump). However, beyond the deplorable excesses that find political expression here, there is a legitimate issue that ought to be addressed: the question of the limits of pluralism. And here Austria is different from Germany and many other European countries: Its historical memory is still haunted by another very pluralistic entity: that of the Habsburg empire, especially in the last fifty years of its existence. At least in the Austrian half of the monarchy (in the other half the not so tacit project was a Hungarian nation state) there were some serious efforts to construct a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state. History rarely repeats itself, but that long-vanished experiment provokes reflections relevant to our own time.
Continue reading at:
In the Vortex of the Migration Crisis?
