Berlin
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“When I think about travel today, I never did it again – it was very dangerous, and I remember that a lot of people have passed away.
As a teenager, Anas Modamani escaped the brutal civil war in Syria for the safety of Europe in 2015, and is one of many who have ended up in Germany where he still lives and now has a passport.
Sitting in a Syrian cafe in Neukorn, the culturally diverse district of the German capital, Modamani smiles and dresses.
He works in it and is busy generating content for his thousands of Tiktok followers in his own time. But he is not a man who doesn’t know the fame of the media. Just a few days after his arrival in Berlin, the selfie he took with then-Chair Minister Angela Merkel went viral as a symbol of his mood at the time.
This week marks the decade after Merkel’s historic decision to open her country’s borders to numerous migrants who have arrived in Europe in search of evacuation from the Civil War and miserable economic hardships.
The image of people marching extensively along the highway carrying property on their backs, making them one of the most enduring modern Europe. And the influence of that moment is still felt today in both German and European politics.
Hundreds of thousands of people were hoping to reach Germany, a fortress of economic stability and prosperity. Merkel welcomed them and declared on August 31, 2015 that they could do “Wir Schaffen Das” or “this can.” It has become an iconic phrase for a broader approach known as Willkommenskultur or Welcome Culture.
But that is a legacy that Germany is still struggling with, and for the German (AFD) party, the far-right alternative will ride a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment and become the country’s largest opposition group.
Prime Minister Friedrich Mertz, despite leading the same CDU party, has long been opposed to Merkel’s policy on immigration, and after taking office earlier this year, he announced a sweeping revision of his immigration policy. They included the deployment of thousands of border guards and the departure of asylum seekers at the border. This is because it was illegally ruled by the Berlin courts.
“We obviously didn’t address it, and that’s exactly why we’re trying to fix it,” Meltz said of the situation in July.
As Bashar al-Assad’s regime had collapsed in Syria at the end of 2024, thousands were taken to the streets at the celebration. It offered Alice Weidel, co-leader of the AFD, another opportunity to call on Syrians in Germany to return.
Weidel told X, “It has become clear that anyone in Germany celebrating “free Syria” has no apparent reason to escape. They should return to Syria soon. ”
When 17-year-old Modamani arrived in Germany in early September 2015, the world looked very different. He tells the story of the 30-day difficult journey he took to Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, Hungary, Austria and, ultimately, Germany.
He said he constantly, on foot, along with other immigrants, through fields, across roads and mountains, and create dangerous boat crossings.
“I was alone. I had no family or friends. I left Syria alone for the war and didn’t want to join the military… I was a small child that I didn’t know much about life,” he told CNN.
After Merkel’s famous August 31 announcement, thousands of people arrived in southern Germany on September 5th and the following day.
He describes the city of Munich as “the best moment of my life.” Locals were applauding and gathered to distribute food and water to the immigrants who arrived.
But Modamani’s journey was about to give another unexpected twist. A few days later, he took that selfie with Merkel when he visited the refugee centre on the outskirts of Berlin in Spandau. His photographs have been taken to create front pages from around the world, transforming modamani into what Syrian refugees are now pouring into Germany.
“I thought she was an actress or a movie star,” Modamani told CNN, recalling the moment. They couldn’t understand each other, but Modamani only spoke Arabic, so “she realized I wanted to take a picture with her, and she was fine with that,” he said.
“This woman visited us at the refugee home because she knew she had saved so many lives.
In 2015 and 2016 alone, an astounding 1,164,000 people have applied for their first asylum in total.
From January 2015 to December 2024, Germany registered its first asylum request for 2.6 million from various countries, according to the Federal Bureau of Immigration and Refugees (BAMF).
Most of these applications came from the citizens of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Syrians have made more than a third of requests in the last two years.
The number fell since 2016, but again rose dramatically in 2022, following a full-scale invasion of Russia’s Ukraine.
Germany has remained the number one country for asylum applications in the European Union for the past decade.
Between 2015 and 2024, data provided by EU statistical firm EuroStat shows that fewer than 8 million (7,984,765) applications have been made across the EU. Over a third of the applications have been submitted to Germany.
These huge numbers, at least in part, the result of Willkommenskultur, contribute to a significant increase in German anti-immigrant sentiment, but they also contributed to the whole of Europe.
German experts told CNN that no one, including Merkel, is prepared for the vast number of people who have entered the country.
“Germany has come from a very small number of around 40-50,000 a year over a decade,” Daniel Tim, professor and director of law at the research center of Immigration and Asylum Law at the University of Constance in Germany, told CNN. “So in Germany, no one really expected this to grow in both 2015 and after that.”
When asked if Merkel felt she had lost control of the situation, Tim replied, “I think she does.”
Hannes Schammann, a professor of political science focused on migration policies at Hildesheim University, reflected these views, adding that Merkel’s decision was based on pragmatism.
“Merkel wanted to stabilize the general European system of exile, so she had to open the door. She had no alternative,” he told CNN. Shaman believes the move is more motivated by politics than altruism, and is rooted in Merkel’s belief that Germany is more equipped to deal with the crisis than other countries.
Merkel is rarely released recently, but in a documentary released this month by German public broadcaster ARD, she said:
While millions of Germans welcomed immigrants, Tim believes Willkommenskultur ended in early 2016 after immigrants were widely criticized for the unprecedented wave of Mob’s sexual assault on Cologne women during the Great Year Day celebration.
The incident put pressure on Merkel and her transition policy.
It also marked the moment when the AFD began to win more local votes.
Merkel acknowledged the impact on her legacy on ARD, saying:
The AFD became Germany’s second most popular party in federal elections earlier this year, reflecting the sharp rise due to ambiguity since its establishment in 2013.
A July 2015 poll of opinion by the ARD found that only 38% of respondents felt that Germany should accept fewer refugees. Ten years later, the figure rose to 68%, according to the same pollster.
Modamani also feels that Germany’s mood has changed since he arrived. “Politicians are constantly on television and say they want to deport people to Syria and Afghanistan. I think Germany has changed its own way.
Tim suggests that recent moves by Meltz are more iconic than anything else. “Behind the façade, the system remains intact. Asylum law is also very European, the German government cannot change that much on its own.”
That said, BAMF data shows that Syrians and Afghans accounted for a total of 110,000 applications in 2024, and the measure could have had some impact from a German desirability standpoint. In the first six months of 2025, there were 29,000 applications from the same group, showing a more dramatic decline.
Modamani said he would not recommend taking the journey he once went.
“If things get worse in Germany, I don’t want to stay here,” he said. “Maybe I’m looking for another country where people are welcome (me) and (me) feel I belong.”
