We make it

The quote on a house facade in Berlin-Mitte

“We can do it!” is a statement that former German Chancellor Angela Merkel made at the federal press conference on August 31, 2015 with regard to the refugee crisis in Germany in 2015/2016 and the increasing reception of refugees in Germany in the media and in political debate and which has since found widespread resonance . It is considered the core slogan or soundbite of the “new welcoming culture ” and founded the refugee debate at the time . She repeated the sentence, which was later widely criticized, several times, including at the CDU federal party conference on December 14, 2015.

The quote from the federal press conference on August 31, 2015 (the so-called summer press conference of the federal government) has subsequently been reproduced in abbreviated form again and again. After listing the historical moments in the Federal Republic that were overcome jointly by the federal, state and local governments, the Chancellor literally said: “I say quite simply: Germany is a strong country. The motive with which we approach these things must be: We have accomplished so much - we can do it! We can do it, and where something stands in our way, it has to be overcome and we have to work on it. The federal government will do everything in its power - together with the states, together with the municipalities - to implement exactly that.”

In mid-September 2016, Merkel qualified in view of her party's significant losses in the elections to the state parliament in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the Berlin House of Representatives as well as the emergence of the AfD . her motto for the first time

Use of the saying

Use in front of Angela Merkel

Already on August 22, 2015, before it was first used by Angela Merkel, the SPD chairman and vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel had used the phrase “We can do it” in connection with the Grand Coalition's refugee policy. Gabriel specified the goal he was striving for as follows: “Peace, humanity, solidarity, justice: these are among the European values. Now we have to prove it. I’m sure we can do it.”

Used by Angela Merkel

On August 31, 2015, Merkel said the sentence for the first time: “I say quite simply: Germany is a strong country. The motive with which we approach these things must be: We have accomplished so much - we can do it! We can do it, and where something stands in our way, it has to be overcome and we have to work on it. The federal government will do everything in its power - together with the states, together with the municipalities - to implement exactly that.”

The sentence was sometimes used slightly expanded by Merkel. She also said: “We have already accomplished so much, we can do it!” At the New Year's address on December 31, 2015, she declared: "We can do it, because Germany is a strong country."

After the presumably Islamist-motivated attacks in Würzburg and Ansbach in July 2016, Merkel interrupted her summer vacation for a press conference in which she repeated her statement and presented a nine-point plan, which is primarily intended to ensure greater security against terrorist attacks. She expanded the sentence to include references to the changed political world situation “in times of globalization”.

Taken up by the press, politics and science

The sentence “We can do it” was quickly received by parts of the media as a positive signal in Germany’s refugee policy. wrote The journalist Georg Diez in his column in the magazine Der Spiegel . the headline “Yes, we can do it” Ruth Holocaust survivor Klüger described to mark the day of remembrance of the victims of National Socialism . at the memorial hour in the Bundestag the sentence as a “simple and yet heroic slogan” Slight variations of the sentence were also used in the press to support Merkel's sentence. 's headline In January 2016, journalist Walter Wüllenweber in Stern read : "Upper limit - we can't do it."

The phrase has been modified many times in the press and on other occasions. The journalist Hans-Georg Damerau used the headline “Refugee policy – ​​'We can't do it'” to support Merkel's refugee policy , since “We can't do it” was not an option. The journalist Thomas Seifert wrote in an editorial in the Wiener Zeitung : “We have to do it”. The peace researcher Egbert Jahn used the title “We (can't) do it!” at the Frankfurt Monday lectures in November 2015. – The helplessness of German and European refugee policy” to address refugee policy in Europe.

On the anniversary of the sentence, Roland Schulz and Rainer Stadler wrote in the Süddeutsche Magazin : “For a year, Germany has been preoccupied with this question - a question of faith: We can do it, We can do it, We can't do it!, Why we have to do it, Can we do it? , or We can do it - but that's not what the corresponding book titles are called. Party conferences, discussion groups, ministries, editorialists have worked on the question, as have business associations, churches, trade unions, as well as major politicians.”

Also a year after the slogan was first uttered, the Viennese religious sociologist Paul Michael Zulehner called for a politics of trust in view of the increased fear of attacks in the summer of 2016, which, in Zulehner's opinion, was often increased by those in charge to a politics of fear. Overcoming fear is possible if commitment and the resources provided are supported by political education, which, among other things, reveal that every religion has been and continues to be associated with violence, Christianity as well as Islam. But, according to Zulehner, arguments often do little to promote a policy of trust. “Encounters are more healing,” says Zulehner.

Federal President Joachim Gauck said in August 2016: “I can't imagine a head of government who goes before the people and says we can't do it. So, why choose such a person? […] The country is not in a state like a sinking ship, it is not even in a state of a severe hurricane, but rather there are gusts that shake us, and they are gusts that also shake up society a little.”

Hugo Müller-Vogg headlined Huffpost on August 31, 2016 “The reality check – what we have achieved so far and what we haven’t” and made reference to the saying in the article.

In her linguistic work examines Doris Sava the saying as an example of an Internet meme .

The Focus Online correspondent Martina Fietz wrote at the end of August 2017: “This formulation is likely to appear in every biography of the Chancellor because – from today’s perspective – it represents the most controversial decision of her chancellorship.” and “Merkel repeated her 'We can do it' at the beginning with the addition that Germany is a strong country. Last fall, however, she admitted in an interview that she hardly wanted to repeat the sentence because too much had been interpreted into it. It has developed into an 'unproductive endless loop'. Your politics have changed in the meantime anyway.”

In December 2018, BDA President Ingo Kramer concluded that Chancellor Angela Merkel was right with her sentence: “We can do it.” Many refugees (around 400,000) received a job or training place in Germany surprisingly quickly. After a year of lessons, most young migrants could speak German so well that they could follow vocational school lessons, and the vast majority of employed refugees work in jobs subject to social security contributions.

On June 22, 2020, ARD broadcast the documentary Angela Merkel: We Can Do It - One Sentence and the Consequences . The film attempts to make a connection between the 2015/2016 refugee crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany .

Merkel distancing herself from her statement

In mid-September 2016, shortly before the election to the Berlin House of Representatives , Merkel distanced herself in an interview with Wirtschaftswoche . from the sentence She understands the skepticism among the population about the sentence and said: “It is part of my political work because I am convinced that we are a strong country that will come out of this phase stronger. It is an expression of an attitude that many people are probably familiar with in their professional and private lives. But sometimes I also think that this sentence is a bit exaggerated, that too much is hidden in it. So much so that I would hardly like to repeat it anymore, as it has become a kind of simple motto, almost an empty formula." She made it clear: "Of course it was never meant that way, but rather as an incentive, a decidedly appreciative one. This is because I know full well that all of us in our country have a lot to shoulder together, but that this is not immediately reflected in the excessively often repeated three words.”

In the election to the Berlin House of Representatives on September 18, 2016, the CDU only received 17.6% of the vote (after 23.3% five years earlier). The day after the election, Merkel said that her phrase “We can do it” had become an “unproductive endless loop” and that it was insufficient to describe the problems associated with accepting refugees. That's why she doesn't want to repeat it again. Instead, she said in a CDU press conference on September 19, 2016: “We will come out of this phase better than we came into it.”

Merkel about “We can do it” in the government declaration in 2018

At the government declaration in March 2018, Merkel said about “We can do it”: “The dispute over this actually banal sentence has since become symptomatic of what our country and we can achieve together and, above all, what we want to achieve together.” During the speech, Merkel appeared thoughtful about her refugee policy.

criticism

The statement was the subject of criticism of Merkel's refugee policy relatively early on, e.g. B. by converting the sentence into its opposite (“We can't do it”) in order to argue that Germany's absorption capacity has been exhausted. On September 11, 2015, Spiegel Online quoted the antithesis of the sentence from Horst Seehofer , then Bavarian Prime Minister: “I see no way to put the stopper back on the bottle.”

In a joint article by ten Spiegel authors from September 19, 2015, the phrase can be found: “Can we do it? What is certain is that Merkel underestimated the pull her words would create, how much people would now feel attracted by the promise of a better life in Germany.” (CDU) said At the beginning of October, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière : “We can’t do it easily – it’s a big effort.” As a radical opponent of Merkel's refugee policy, the Brandenburg AfD state chairman Alexander Gauland shouted "We don't want to do it at all!" in a speech on October 7, 2015 at the Erfurt Wednesday demonstration of the Thuringian state association of the AfD to great applause from around 8,000 gathered supporters the resignation of the Federal Chancellor. In October 2015, the mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer ( The Greens ), also said “We can't do it” and advocated an upper limit on the admission of refugees (“Under the current conditions, where 10,000 refugees come to Germany every day, we can't do it .”).

The journalist Alexander Marguier wrote in the magazine Cicero that Merkel was a “talker”. Critics also varied Merkel's sentence. FAZ editor Berthold Kohler wrote in October 2015: “We can do it, I can’t help it.” On January 26, 2016 , the journalist Theo Sommer chose the headline in his column in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit : "Merkel's 'We can do it' is no longer convincing." Hans-Peter Uhl (CSU), a member of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2017, said in January 2016: “We can’t do it like this”. Peter Tomaschko (CSU), member of the state parliament in Bavaria , said in January 2016: “We can no longer do it”. The online edition Mannheimer Morgen wrote in January 2016: “We can do it – but not like this”.

Sigmar Gabriel (then federal chairman of the SPD) said in a summer interview on ZDF in 2016 that it was not enough to constantly say that we can do it. Rather, the conditions must be created so that we can do it - but the CDU/CSU has that. always blocked'.

In August 2017, shortly before the 2017 federal election , SPD chancellor candidate Martin Schulz said it was not enough to say “we can do it”. You then have to create the conditions for this. Schulz therefore called for a political strategy that regulates immigration on a permanent and stable basis on the state side.

The journalist Mathias Müller von Blumencron wrote in August 2019 that Merkel's sentence had divided Germany. A secular society has difficulty engaging in a style of “ I can’t do anything else , ” Lutheran which Merkel may have felt.

Linguistic analysis and criticism

The phrase was seen close to Barack Obama's " Yes we can " (2008). In 1990 , Chancellor Helmut Kohl regarding German unity . said “We will do it” Kohl's statement uses the future tense, Merkel's sentence “We can do it” uses the present tense .

What all three sentences have in common is that a concrete object and a precise definition of the we-group are missing: Who exactly belongs to the we-group? Especially when Merkel later repeated her statement and added: “I didn’t say: We can do it alone.” Who are “we alone” who can’t do “that”? And what exactly will “we” achieve or can “we” achieve? The FDP chairman Christian Lindner criticized this as follows: “What is missing is: What can we achieve? Missing: How do we do this? And what’s missing is: Who can do it?”

Nils Minkmar wrote in Spiegel : “Who are we when all borders are open, when the Chancellor is also responsible for Syrians? This question undermines the effect of the beautiful sentence 'We can do it!' Because many conservative Germans - including by no means only CDU voters, but also many Greens and Social Democrats - can no longer spontaneously understand who this 'we' is actually supposed to be. And an imploring, encouraging sentence that loses its subject is ineffective.”

made an attempt to specify and differentiate the general object “that” Walter Wüllenweber on the occasion of the first anniversary of the first mention of the slogan in August 2016: “Germany is making progress in accommodating refugees, in administration and in school education. Voluntary help from civil society is becoming increasingly professional. Germany can do all of this. We can’t just deport rejected asylum seekers.” In August 2018, Wüllenweber summarized: “We have achieved a lot: three years after Germany allowed refugees from Hungary into the country, the balance is surprisingly positive. There is a lot to do, but there is no crisis.” However, according to Wüllenweber, deportation (as in 2016) remains “a major, unsolved problem”.

It was also pointed out that Angela Merkel's sentence matched the German translation of the name of the left-wing populist party Podemos , which has been active in Spain since 2012 . Merkel was probably not aware of this connection and it does not play a role in the debate about her quote.

“We can do it” surveys from 2017

2017

Die Welt published a survey on “We can do it” on September 1, 2017. 55.8% of those surveyed saw “We can do it” as not true or not at all true . 38% said not true at all . 37.2% described “We can do it” as somewhat accurate or completely accurate . In the survey, there were significant differences in answers by age, West and East Germany and the number of supporters of different parties. Only among the Union's supporters at 56.5% and the Greens at 68.5% did the majority believe that the saying was true. For all other parties, the majority of supporters felt that the opinion was not accurate or not accurate at all . 47.3% of the Left, 51.7% of the SPD, 58.2% of the FDP and 96.9% of the AfD supporters were negative. The older the respondents are, the more likely they are to rate Merkel's statement as “not applicable”. In East Germany, 63% of those surveyed rated “We can do it” as “not applicable”, in West Germany the figure was 53.6%.

2018

In August 2018 , the online edition of the “ Süddeutsche Zeitung ” asked its readers to draw a conclusion on “three years of 'We can do it'”. The editors published a “highlighted comment” from a reader on August 24, 2018 on the editorial page. The author positively assesses that the many asylum applications could have been processed in accordance with the Geneva Refugee Convention and that Germany is on top of things when it comes to integration a good path, especially that many refugees have found paid work. The Balkan conflict of the 1990s shows that many refugees generally return to their homeland as soon as there is peace there. Everything that needed to be done had been tackled. However, it was not possible to prevent some politicians from “creating the mood through agitation” and to ensure that everyone internalized the guiding principle of the Basic Law (“Human dignity is inviolable.”).

According to the ARD Germany trend from September 2018, a majority of respondents in Germany do not consider the federal government's refugee policy to be successful. expressed this opinion

• 50 percent with regard to the accommodation and distribution of refugees
• 69 percent in terms of preventing violence and crime
• 69 percent with regard to the integration of refugees into the labor market
• 83 percent with regard to the deportation of rejected asylum seekers.

In addition, 49 percent of those surveyed said that the federal government ( Cabinet Merkel IV - Union and SPD ) does not take concerns about immigration seriously. Of those surveyed in the new federal states, 66% said this.

Other uses and allusions

Used in Angela Merkel's speech at the Political Ash Wednesday 2018

Angela Merkel ended her speech at the CDU's Political Ash Wednesday in Demmin on February 14, 2018 with the sentence “I am convinced that we can do it,” referring to the slow pace of government formation. It was the first time since the summer of 2016 that Merkel used the phrase.

Use of Beatrix von Storch after the shooting spree in Münster on April 7, 2018

Beatrix von Storch , deputy parliamentary group leader of the AfD parliamentary group , described the perpetrator of the shooting spree in Münster on April 7, 2018 as a “copycat of Islamic terror” in a Twitter post. She had previously tweeted the Merkel quote “We can do it” in capital letters with an angry emoticon , thereby linking the act to refugee policy . Four people were killed and numerous others were injured in the shooting spree. The General Secretary of the CSU Markus Blume then asked von Storch to give up her Bundestag mandate. also criticized by AfD chairman Jörg Meuthen . Storch was

Allusions in the wake of the alleged “BAMF scandal” in June 2018

In June 2018, during the alleged scandal surrounding manipulated asylum procedures and the possibly incorrect work at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), Bild wrote on June 2, 2018 "We can't do it with this BAMF" and the Süddeutsche Zeitung headlined the BAMF on June 3, 2018: “You can’t do it.”

Used in Angela Merkel's government statement on the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2021

Angela Merkel ended her government statement on March 25, 2021 on the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany with the sentence “We will defeat this virus. And that’s why I’m absolutely sure we’ll do it.” A parallel had already been drawn in the media between Merkel's call for more flexibility and her language at the time of the refugee crisis.

Weblinks

• René Schlott: “We can do it!” On the emergence and afterlife of a topos . From Politics and Contemporary History , July 17, 2020
• Philipp Wittrock, Christina Elmer : Angela Merkel and refugee policy: The balance after one year “We can do it”. Spiegel Online , August 31, 2016
• Jan Bielicki: Three years of “We can do it” - an inventory . sueddeutsche.de, August 31, 2018
• Hans-Hermann Tiedje: Merkel and her shadow man. Neue Zürcher Zeitung , August 20, 2018.
• Tina Groll, Katharina Schuler: Refugees: What has already been done - and what hasn't . zeit.de. June 25, 2019