Germany’s ‘Stadtbild’ Debate Explained: Merz, Migration and Political Fallout

How one word ignited Germany’s deepest debate on identity.

The “Stadtbild” debate in Germany began after Chancellor Friedrich Merz used the German word Stadtbild (“cityscape” or “city image”) in a comment about migration and visible social challenges in urban spaces. What might sound like an aesthetic remark quickly became a national political controversy — drawing responses from opposition politicians, municipal leaders and public commentators — and revealing deeper tensions about integration, security and identity in German cities.

I recently started reading A History of Germany in the 20th Century, a 1,200-page doorstopper by historian Ulrich Herbert. The first chapter explores the extraordinary speed of change that swept through German cities in the three decades before the First World War. Mark Twain, visiting Berlin at the time, remarked that “Berlin […] is newer to the eye than is any other city,” adding that most of it “looks like it was built last week.”

Germany was a latecomer to industrialisation and urbanisation, but once it got going, it moved at full speed. The capital’s population quadrupled between 1870 and 1910. Look at the engravings on any German city’s Altbau and you’ll find dates from those years. The transformation was fascinating, thrilling — and deeply disorienting. Herbert quotes a young baker’s apprentice who described being “assaulted, attacked and torn apart from all sides by the rhythm, the people, the language, the mores and customs” of Berlin.

That breakneck pace of change put immense strain on German society. Some people sought refuge in strange, esoteric beliefs. Others turned toward radical ideologies.

Reading that chapter, it was hard not to think of today. The Federal Republic was a latecomer to the modern Western world of multi-ethnic societies. Between 2010 and now, the number of foreign nationals has more than doubled from under seven million to over 14 million. When immigration took off, it did so at such speed that many people were left feeling dizzy and unsettled.

I remember the summer of 2014, when I stayed in a friend’s apartment in Munich. The street was lined with lively bars. One evening, when I asked a man for a lighter, I ended up being filled up to my eyeballs with schnapps as locals regaled me with stories in unintelligible Bavarian dialect. When I later moved to Berlin, it felt like entering a different world — new languages, new faces, a jumble of cultures. When I returned to that same Munich street a decade later, I could hardly tell it apart from Berlin. Over one shoulder I heard English, over the other Arabic.