Berlin’s Konzerthaus has witnessed many historic highs and lows: from wartime ruin to Leonard Bernstein’s electric “Ode to Freedom” concert in December 1989, celebrating the end of Cold War divisions.
Now, in a monument to a new European division and disgrace, some 1,700 orange life jackets have been strapped to the concert hall's six neo-classical pillars, commemorating the thousands of people who sought a better life in Europe last year but instead drowned.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's striking installation, using lifejackets and boats washed up on beaches in Lesbos, is well-timed – as Europe's migration crisis threatens to claim is latest and most prominent drowning victim: German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Ahead of Thursday's EU summit, the German leader was braced for her eastern neighbours to step up their opposition in Prague to EU refugee quotas. But Berlin is reeling at a perceived stab in the back from Paris. French prime minister Manuel Valls has said his government will honour its pledge to take 30,000 of the 160,000 refugees to relocate around Europe.
“But we won’t take anymore,” he said. “We are not in favour of a permanent relocation mechanism. The time now is to implement what has been discussed and negotiated: … hot spot (registration centres) and external border controls.”
Valls made a swipe at Merkel's unilateral decision last year to set aside EU migration regulations and allow in Syrian asylum seekers trapped in Hungary". He said: "France never said 'come to France'."
Germany accepted 1.1 million asylum applicants in 2015, leaving Merkel struggling now to square a tricky political circle: reduce radically Germany's asylum numbers this year without closing German borders, a move she fears would undermine the Schengen free movement area.
Merkel’s strategy hinges on the success of measures beyond her immediate control, from effective policing of the EU’s outer borders to EU refugee burden-sharing.
Of the five promised hotspots in Greece, however, only the Lesbos facility is operational while the facility on the island of Chios has just been finished.
Meanwhile growing EU mutiny over redistribution quotas has left Merkel dependent on Turkey’s readiness to keep would-be asylum seekers in its neighbourhood.
With political vultures circling over her Berlin chancellery, it fell to her Social Democratic (SPD) vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel to throw a rescue ring yesterday to the struggling German leader.
Gabriel dismissed claims that Germany’s struggle was self-inflicted after effectively inviting in the world’s refugees last year.
Germany was instead a magnet for refugees, Gabriel argued in the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily on Monday, because its economic strength made it an attractive destination.
“But even the strongest countries cannot manage such challenges alone ... and are dependent on support of our EU partners,” he said. “It’s no loss of face to admit that.”
But, as migration crisis reaches a new peak, the mood in Berlin is of growing isolation and humiliation.
As the WirtschaftsWoche magazine put it on Monday: "Within a year, Germany has gone from leader in Europe to supplicant."
