In 2015 hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq traveled along the Balkan Route to Germany, often on foot and after days stuck in stations. Chancellor Angela Merkel decided on September 4, 2015 that federal police would not block refugees at the border and that Germany would accept them. More than a million asylum seekers arrived in the months that followed, an unprecedented migration since 1949. Many Germans welcomed the newcomers while others reacted with polarization around Merkel's “We can do it” remark. The influx produced widespread social, political, and demographic shifts across Germany.
The photos of young men with backpacks and weary faces who set out on foot in September 2015 from Hungary on their way to Austria and Germany. Pictures of fathers with babies on their arms making their way along the Balkan Route. Of women in headscarves holding their children's hands. Thousands of them, tired of simply hunkering down in the Budapest train station where they had been stuck for days.
During the night of September 4, 2015, Merkel, who was chancellor at the time, decided that the German federal police officers would not block the refugees at the border. Germany would accept them. In the months that followed, more than a million asylum seekers arrived in the country - an unprecedented number. Never before since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 had the country seen such a huge wave of migration.
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