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The recent tension provoked by violent protests in the city of Chemnitz in eastern Germany on Thursday hit Angela Merkel's government, threatening a truce with the Chancellor's interior minister.
Merkel quickly countered his minister's comments, calling on the Germans to continue working "step by step" to solve the problems of immigration.
In an interview with RTL television, Merkel quoted the 65,000 people who showed up Monday at a rock concert in support of the family of a 35-year-old German man killed in Chemnitz, illustrating the success of the Integration of the country. more than one million asylum seekers since 2015.
"We have done a lot in hosting refugees, but we are also faced with the question of how we treat them in an orderly way," Merkel said. "This task must simply be addressed."
But the images of thousands of angry protesters in Chemnitz – some giving the Nazi salute and others chasing people seen as migrants on the street – told another story.
The crowd's anger towards the suspects in the assassination of Chemnitz – a Syrian who was granted asylum and a rejected Iraqi – reflected how much the issue of immigration had divided German society.
Although government statistics show that overall crime has decreased by more than 9% in 2017, violent crime has increased by about 10% in 2015 and 2016, which officials attributed to the large number of young men entering in the country.
"People are upset and indignant because of these killings and I understand that," said Horst Seehofer, head of security in Germany. told the Rheinische Post newspaper in an interview, speaking of the attack of August 26 in Chemnitz. He added that he had not been a minister, "I would have taken the street as a citizen, but of course not with the radicals".
Mr Seehofer, a leader of the Christian Social Union, a branch of the Merkel-only Merkel conservatives, added: "Migration is the mother of all political problems".
The remark provoked outrage from members of the center-left Social Democrats, who rule with Merkel, and opposition politicians. Karamba Diaby, a social democratic legislator born in Senegal, highlighted that 19.7 million Germans have foreign parents or born abroad.
And the comment came a few months after Mr Seehofer almost overthrew Merkel's government after calling for the closure of the country's southern border with Austria.
Next month, the state of Bavaria, in the south of the country, will face crucial elections and recent polls show that support for the Christian Social Union, which received 47.7% of votes in 2013, has dropped about 10%.
At the same time, the far right alternative for Germany, or AfD – who did not participate in the race five years ago – is expected to win about 14% of the vote .
Images of AfD members marching alongside the leaders of an anti-Islamist organization during a demonstration in Chemnitz led to calls for place the party under the observation of the national intelligence services of the country, a measure reserved for organizations suspected of extremism that could threaten the democratic principles of the country.
"The AfD sometimes plays a role in warming things up," Merkel said in RTL's interview.
"There were also statements that I consider very critical, such as recently when there was a call for a" silent revolution, in which journalists who do not report what I want should disappear, "said the Chancellor. by the leader of the far-right party, Alexander Gauland, this week.
The intelligence agency of the state of Thuringia, in the east of the country, said on Thursday that it would gather information to determine whether there were reasons to place the local branch of the AfD under formal observation.
Such a measure requires intelligence officials to record the party's activities and statements, but refrain from allowing them to use or spy on their channels of communication.
An evaluation of the information will determine whether evidence of extremist ambitions is sufficient to lead to formal observation. If nothing is found, the file will be closed.
The intelligence services of the western states of Lower Saxony and Bremen said Monday that they have placed under surveillance the AfD youth observatory, the Young Alternative, accusing the state of affairs. organization to have links with known far right groups.
Thuringia's intelligence service cited cooperation between AfD members in the state, recent actions and writings of the party leader, Björn Höcke, who has been questioning the past year about the tradition of commemoration and expiation of Nazi crimes in the country after the Second World War.
This led to calls within the AfD for his deportation, which would have meant that security officials in Thuringia had to regard him as an individual, and not speak on behalf of the party.
But the AfD has decided not to kick him out, leaving the party as a whole open to surveillance, said Stephan Kramer, chairman of the Thuringian intelligence agency.
"As a national intelligence agency, we will not be able to solve the problem of AfD," said Kramer. "But we can not act as if what they were doing is the children's game."
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