But “there is immense unrest in Germany,” notes Stephan Grünewald from the Rheingold Institute in Cologne, who specializes in conducting psychological in-depth interviews with voters: “In our interviews, all the talk was about: refugee crisis, refugee crisis, refugee crisis. The psychological mood of the voters is wobbly, I have never before experienced such rage and so much hate among the test persons.”

At times when I think of Germany today, an image comes to my mind that is familiar to many older Germans who experienced the air raids in the last war. I see a group of people huddled together in a bomb shelter who hear the detonations come closer and closer. And they keep ducking their heads, hoping the war will soon end by itself.