Returning from her summer break in mid-August, German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised some eyebrows by describing Europe's refugee problem as a bigger challenge than the Greece crisis, which had overshadowed all else in the first half of 2015. No one in Germany is questioning her assessment any longer. In the past two weeks, the country has been shaken by a perfect storm of headlines that have elevated the refugee issue, long seen in Germany as primarily a southern European problem, to the very top of the public and political agenda.
First, Merkel's interior minister announced that he expected 800,000 people to seek asylum in Germany this year, nearly double the amount that had been forecast only a few months before and almost four times last year's total.
Next came the far-right protests against refugees in the eastern town of Heidenau that left over 30 police injured and revived the specter of racist violence that Germany experienced in the early 1990s, the last time asylum numbers surged.